I Hear Those Voices That Will Not Be Drowned : The Cold Song Series
by eldritchhorrors
Summary: Sherlock is bored. Bored with no cases, bored with life, bored with everything. But he promised John, promised, that drugs were off the table. And just because he is asking John for too much in return, doesn't mean that Sherlock isn't willing to give it. This is how broken people fall in love.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Sherlock has a complicated relationship with drugs, but John gives Sherlock an ultimatum. What John doesn't realize is what lengths Sherlock might have to go to in order to replace them. What Sherlock doesn't realize is that John is okay with that.

Graphic depiction of drug use. Some BDSM themes, some intellectual angst, but at heart I write love stories. Sherlock/Cocaine, Sherlock/John.

"_But dreaming builds what dreaming can disown.  
>Dead fingers stretch themselves to tear it down.<br>I hear those voices that will not be drowned  
>Calling, there is no stone<br>In earth's thickness to make a home  
>That you can build with and remain alone."<em>

_from Peter Grimes_

_Composer: Benjamin Britten_

_Librettist: Montagu Slater_

I Hear Those Voices That Will Not Be Drowned

Sherlock was sitting in front of a box, pensive. It was a gorgeous little thing, glowing umbers and interesting grain highlighted by scrolled metal. Wood was a tactile material that invited touch, but Sherlock sat back from it, observing it like he would a suspect, analyzing potential behaviors to see if the suspect might bite. He was in the middle of the sofa, in the little dip his arse had carved over the past 4 years of owning it _previous owner elderly sofa a gift hated it had blind dog son still living with her_ leaning back into the seat with his chin to his chest and his legs splayed wide. Steepled fingers occasionally tapped against his chin to hide the slight tremble that threatened to arrest them, but he didn't take his eyes off the box, despite their deep bruised look from lack of sleep.

John was _out_. Sherlock hoped that his flight from 221B wasn't permanent, but over the months John had lived there, Sherlock had come to realize that he had a very tenuous grasp on how John Watson would respond to things. John, despite, or perhaps because of, his emotional sentimentality, was a constant surprise in word and deed, which made him fascinating at most times.

In this instance, it was an unwelcome wild card.

John was rather chameleon-like. He could be hard enough to shoot down a stranger that inadequately threatened a man that John hadn't even known for a day. He could be sweet enough to choke down Mrs. Hudson's biscuits even though he loathed butterscotch. What was he to make of a visually non-threatening man that cured his emotional ills by fighting crime with a nutter in London?

In the beginning John would laude his abilities, and within the same half hour call him to task for not feeling emotional enough over a death, or his bloody stalker of a brother, or a head in the refrigerator. Lately, since their last contact with Moriarty and the debacle at the pool, John had quieted the heartless accusation, and the biting words about his sociopathy. Silent as a deprivation chamber, in fact.

Sherlock worried at the reasons for this like an abscessed tooth, but preferred to study John and come to his own conclusions rather than ask him about it and get put off with a banal smile and an "I don't know what you are talking about, and by the way, would you do something about that mucus you left in the bath?"

He didn't know if John would be around to complain about mucus anymore, and that disturbed him, because he should know after so many months of concentrated association. He usually knew everyone's tells within days, (at most weeks) but none of the predictors of John's behavior, that Sherlock had been able to pinpoint, were accurate within a comfortable margin of error.

The problem was that John could be so oddly conservative in some ways, creating a marked dichotomy between thought and action, what he wanted mentally and what his body was starved for. He had no problem lunching with a suspected killer and leaping rooftops to track a witness, and what he'd been able to deduce about some of John's past sexual exploits would make Mycroft blush, but his clothes, his recent girlfriends, even his day job, seemed to advertise a quest for a normal life to balance the much more exciting abnormality that had dominated it lately. It baffled Sherlock, because the abnormality of the chase was obviously what the doctor needed, and John was just as obviously grasping at it with one hand and pushing it away with another. He supposed the push was a knee-jerk reaction to win approval from ghosts either long dead or neglectful, by trying to fulfill their idea of normal.

The abnormal, if fleetingly enjoyable, wasn't supposed to be a permanent state of affairs, apparently.

Locum GP, bland candy-box girlfriend that kept her knees firmly together, please and thank you and good day. That's what he was supposed to have, so he pursued it doggedly. Give him a few years and he'd be psyching himself into proud C of E. A normality apologist.

Sherlock didn't hate whatever her name was. She wasn't vile, or hateful, or a killer, or unpleasant. She didn't call up at awkward times and demand attention. She didn't bother Sherlock at all, and was very understanding of his demands on John's time, but Sherlock still loathed her with casual ease, because she'd committed one of the most grievous sins of all.

She was _boring_.

But John bought her dinners and stayed in her front room, and wore the ugly jumper she'd given him all in an effort to appease normality and perhaps one day get his end down.

Normal. Expected. Married. Respectable flat no, probably a house away from London considering her shoes and the novel in her handbag. Two kids with boring names that would grow up to be condescending CPAs or stockbrokers that didn't come home for Christmas and would eventually put John in a home while calling him an old dear. John would move out of the flat and call Sherlock every few weeks, then every few months, tapering off into holiday cards until one day the second little sprog found an old news clipping and John said "Sherlock who?" not even realizing how much he had died inside, despite how much his leg pained him.

It wasn't just baffling, it was frustrating. John's little conservative streak with its random _petty_ hang ups and tiresome moral judgments was threatening to rip their comfortable, useful work relationship apart.

Threatening to overwhelm them, end them, with his quest for normal.

Because…

_John had found a needle. _

John…

_didn't take it well._

Bit of an understatement, that.

He'd tried to explain it to John, but this must have been another of those bit-not-good moments that Sherlock had trouble parsing, because John was having none of it, angry at Sherlock's blasé attitude.

The look on John's _face_.

"Sherlock."

He'd ignored him the first time, guessing that John had found the viscera in the sink. The second call had him look up from his science journal, because it had risen into a register that meant he was trying to suppress anger. "Sherlock."

John was in the doorway, wearing a look that vacillated between bitter disappointment and absurd hope, like mummy had worn after his first arrest. John'd just come in from the street, muttering about food and Tesco _good mood, light coat, wind brushed hair had come through the park then_ and…Sherlock looked down at his hand. Oh.

"Sherlock, I hope that these are for an experiment." He was holding an eraser that had three needles stuck in it. Sherlock had put them in the kitchen junk drawer weeks ago. He had unscrewed them from the syringes and placed them in the rubber intending to sand the dull points to a new sharpness since the rest of his hypos had run out. He hadn't gotten around to it, and had eventually gotten new syringes to replace them. He must have deleted them as unimportant.

"They are. I use them for an ongoing series of tests."

John's face was impassive, except for a little tick under his right eye. "And these experiments, would they be using a human guinea pig?"

"Guinea pigs are poor substitutes for use in hum "

"Are they being used on you?" John was having problems modulating his voice. Perhaps Sherlock had underestimated the impact his occasional dabbling would have on his flat mate.

"Sometimes. Not for several weeks. I fail to see "

"How!" John finally snapped, frown pulling down at the corners of his mouth, but the facial tick was gone. "How do you fail to see how bloody absurd this is? I thought you were a genius!"

"I am."

"Stephen Hawking does not shoot up to get his jollies."

"He might if he _could_. And you can't use a group of two to make a valid statistical analysis of "

"Shut up."

"This is dull, John. And your inability to let me finish a sentence makes it even more boring."

"Boring? You think me finding out that my _flatmate _is a junkie is boring. I worry about you, you big tit! I have to deal with my sister's addiction crises enough to know that I don't want to deal with my best friend doing the same thing."

Sherlock gave a small start at that, but he covered well and didn't think it showed, not when John was so preoccupied with Sherlock's extracurricular activities Still, he'd never been someone's best friend before. He found the idea interesting.

"Are you even seeing a doctor?"

"I see you every day."

"Another doctor. Your doctor."

Sherlock just stared at John with steady eyes until John shook his head.

"You. Are unbelievable."

"It isn't a problem. Not for me, and certainly not for you. I do it rarely, but it's occasionally necessary to fulfill my full cognitive function."

"It _is_ a problem for me. A very big problem." This time John was pacing the width of the kitchen entrance. "I can't watch this Sherlock. Why do you think I was living in a crap bedsit and looking for a flat share? I can't live with Harry and watch her do that to herself. What makes you think I want to see the same self destruction from you?"

John turned at the end of a long stride, glaring. "Do you have any in the house at the moment?"

Sherlock thought of prevaricating, but John in this mood was too hard to read, and his reaction to a lie couldn't be predicted. "Yes."

John seemed to deflate.

"I'm sorry, John." But Sherlock knew that was no good even as he said it. It sounded too much like a child apologizing even though they didn't know why, voice raised in question at the last syllable.

John shook his head, shook his shoulders, looked down at his shoes with a frown for a moment. He nodded decisively for a moment before snatching his keys off the coffee table and tossing the embedded needles to Sherlock, who gripped them reflexively.

"You." John pointed with a hard finger as he walked to the top of the exit stairs. "Get rid of that. Get rid of the drugs. Get rid of whatever you need to." John's back was to him now, and John's hands were white on the door frame for a moment before he let go. "When I get back, I want them gone. And I want a promise."

"An ultimatum? Really?"

"A promise Sherlock. Promise me you won't do them any more."

Sherlock closed his eyes. "I don't "

"Your promise. Or I'm gone instead."

There was the sound of feet pounding down the stairs. When Sherlock opened his eyes, he was alone. He hopped to his feet, stepping over the low table on the way to the window, but by the time he'd pulled back the curtain John could no longer be seen.

John had told him to stop. Not just the drugs, but everything that made the lulls in action bearable.

John just didn't understand, and Sherlock had no way of making someone who wasn't himself understand.

It really _wasn't_ a problem. He wasn't an addict. He was perfectly capable of going weeks without touching a drug. He'd thought that after Lestrade's joke of a drugs bust that John would have realized that it was a fixture in Sherlock's life, one that he'd take in stride like the skull, and the indoor marksmanship, and the acid eating into the linoleum. As much a fixture as John had become. John, who couldn't leave over some infantile misunderstanding.

He wasn't an addict in the physical sense. His real addiction was to the working of his mind, a precision instrument that needed to work at its full potential. He'd always mocked the people that assumed he did the drugs to slow his mind down and allow himself to forget. Why on earth would he do that? Ennui was a lethargy of the mind that drove him mad. Cocaine jump started the systems that were languishing. Moderately smart people, those that weren't _total_ morons, could solve math puzzles or crosswords, or join groups like Mensa so they could do the same with a self-congratulating audience, but Sherlock needed something more. Mycroft had world domination done from the safety of a desk, well buffered by a legion of people and communications, but Sherlock needed something hands on and immediate, because as much as he had tried to train himself otherwise, he was devoted to the rush of instant gratification.

The problem was that gratification through his work was not always available.

Muscles atrophied from disuse, and his brain was no different. Too long without a case, and he could feel wretched stagnation take hold, creeping like a black mold across his mind. He'd not lied to John, when he said that it was his hard drive. He'd been able to see the internal architecture of his mind since he was eleven, and just coming into the realization of how unbearably idiotic everyone else _not father not Mycroft not [redacted] _ was. Stacked drives of information neatly ordered and regimented inside cool grey metal stacks. Serene, almost Japanese in their minimalist formation. The system was perfect for quick retrieval and rapid deletion. Large cabinets were created to store the larger, messier parts of himself that seemed indelible, muffling their input till they were a whisper instead of a chorus.

It was probably the only thing that had gotten him through his teen years, and the nightmare that was university.

But disuse, boredom, dreary expanses of nothing meaty to feed it, those moments took their toll, and the rapid fire of his interface began to stall, and he could not take that. It became a physical ache in his stomach _pleasing synchronicity that he and John should have psychosomatic pain in common and for similar reasons _ that was an outward manifestation of an internal mental agony. Pieces out of proper alignment, too scattered, defying the natural order, which could lead to user error.

Division by zero.

His mind needed defragging, and that was where the coke came into play.

He'd snorted it before. Freebased it. The effects were a slight sharpening of his senses, and greater endurance. He ceased optimal function after 36 hours awake, and snorting coke helped him push that number to 48. Then one day, in the spirit of scientific inquiry _bloody stupidity said Mycroft_ he'd shot it. It was a smaller dose, and he didn't achieve a distinctly different high, but there was difference enough to tantalize him with the possibility of more, so the next time he shot it, he upped the dose to a seven percent solution of the same cocaine he had previously shot at three percent.

His brain caught cold fire, like light through a prism. Super fast processor, restored order, information refracted with efficiency, everything placed with chilly crystalline clarity. Short lived effect with obvious audiovisual side effects, but profitable.

It was good. Not great, but good. He could amp his own mind up onto that plateau, especially during a case, so it wasn't quite like discovering new territory, but this had been an easy in, and a respite when boredom was threatening to degrade the information fortress he had worked on so diligently.

Further experimentation with the drug revealed its limits, and how to exploit it for the best results. His conclusions were surprising at first, but not after he considered the fact that _of course _most people couldn't be arsed to use the drug to its full potential. The underachievers.

The secret was that it wasn't just about the drug that was only a small part of it.

Cocaine hyper-focused his mind, kept it from feeling neglected, true, but drugs weren't the only way to accomplish that. Altered states of consciousness had been chased, historically, since the beginning of civilization, and Sherlock was no stranger to that chase either. The trifecta of drugs, pain and ritual could be pursued singly or combined to school the mind into the desired arrangement. Common knowledge.

Drugs: drugs created an artificial disconnect, and depending on the drug, the mind could be slowed down into a stupor, or concentrated into a precise laser. He preferred cocaine due to the upsurge in neurotransmisson. Heroin left him...dull. It made him feel as if he were approaching the level of everyone else, an event horizon of mediocrity, as his thoughts were muffled and smothered. He'd once liked the smothering effect, but that was a long time ago, in [redact]…another place entirely; couldn't bear it now.

Pain: pain was a powerful foci, too. Practitioners of the Native American Sundance and Hindu Kavandi Bearing proved its efficacy, but a cost/benefit analysis of Sherlock's forays into sadomasochism had shown that it was usually not worth the effort expended, even though he had experimented with pain first and best. It had been small things in the beginning, in his early teens when he could still occasionally be ruled by hormonal imperatives. Clips on the nipples. Rough masturbation. Lines of clothespins attached to string, then affixed to the tender skin of his inner thighs before being pulled away one by one in a cascade effect. He'd even attempted autoerotic asphyxiation, but stopped after a blackout episode that could have permanently damaged his brain, or killed him.

He'd gradually upped his threshold, increased his set of practices, but lone sadomasochism was…lonely. Even as socially backward as he was considered, he still realized the difference between touches from himself and the theoretical touch of another. He didn't discount the power of touch, it was just easier not to require it. Unlike cocaine, touch was too addictive, and it was too hard to procure a steady supply that wouldn't be yanked away just as he'd come to depend on it. Gradually, he'd come to see the need for another participant- _nights spent on knees choking on cock uncut start soft long lean pleasure thrust blood bloody sublimating anger at [redact] hard too hard scar _- but he had eventually come to the conclusion that mental focus through pain and submission was not for him.

Victor had shown him that.

Practicing alone ruled out many of the most effective forms of reaching the desired mental plateau, and the addition of another person, while physically having better impact - _don't think about how good it could be don't remember the early trials before things went [redact redact redact!]_ - was …mentally distracting. Sherlock didn't _do_ people.

Not anymore.

So that left ritual. Ritual to achieve an altered state was the hardest to cultivate, but also the most rewarding in terms of payoff. And when combined with drugs or pain the result was stunning. Ritual worked when the user created a series of actions, or words, and applied them during the mental state they wished to achieve. The human brain made the connection due to repetition, a Pavlovian response to those actions in the future. A chant made during a state of heightened mental acuity, and practiced during those states, would eventually lead to the chant creating the heightened mental state when called upon. Religion was based upon ritual.

His violin was a ritual that guided his mind through mental mazes, one that had become so ingrained in his behavior that he feared what would happen if it was ever taken away. That was the main reason why he had never allowed things to get so bad that he was on the street he'd never be able to protect his most prized possession if he were homeless.

The complexities of Sarasate and Wieniawski unfolded like a mathematical proof and seduced him into that higher mental plane. He'd learned the piano first, like Mycroft, but had picked up the violin later. They had all learned an instrument or two, he, Mycroft and…

He played well not as well as _she_ had but he'd built upon what she'd taught him, practiced her favorite composers doggedly, even knowing that he lacked that elusive thing that would make him a truly great violinist.

When he needed quiet meditation he switched to more modern pieces, like Arvo Part's Fratres. He'd also listen to Part's choral work, just like he listened to Purcell, and Handel, and Berg, and Britten, but he no longer…no longer…

When he needed sharpening outside of a case…when it'd become an almost desperate ache…

He didn't want to taint the violin and all it meant to him. He didn't want to taint music, as fraught as his relationship with it already was. He wasn't sentimental, but he allowed himself this small thing.

He needed other ritual means of attaining zero point.

And shooting up was a ritual his ritual for the things music wouldn't touch. Everything about it had been crafted with the express purpose of focusing on the self, and particularly his mind.

The box was stored behind the front fabric of the speaker that sat next to the sofa. The speaker looked untampered with, but a small loop of black ribbon could be pulled to make the whole fabric frontispiece detach. He'd replaced the actual speaker with a smaller version so that the box could be hidden and the sound retained. He'd crafted the beautiful box himself, having read about the IKEA effect, which stated that the things we create or assemble ourselves are perceived as more valuable and precious than the things we merely purchase- people valued the cheap melamine IKEA table because they had a hand in putting it together. Part of creating a ritual was fetishizing the accoutrements involved, so he made sure that every aspect of the design of his ritual had layers of meaning. He made the box, and this box wouldn't just have meaning.

He wanted a masterpiece.

The box itself was long and slender, like a large, expensive pencil box. The auburn mahogany case was an antique that had once held a set of fleams and a bloodstick, used by some early Victorian snake oil doctor to bleed the foul humors from nervous wives. The fleams were long gone, and the inside was in red velvet tatters when he first brushed his hand over it in a third rate antique shop. He hadn't been able to keep his hands from it, fingering its parts until he lifted it from the shop. The petty crime made it even more personal, more valuable as he took it home, where he contemplated it for a number of weeks before deciding how he would proceed.

He'd stripped the red velvet with careful hands, savoring the slow rip of cloth that parted for him almost before he tore it. Cloth redolent with mold and decay as it came apart, revealing the papier mache underneath it that had previously formed a cradle for the missing instruments. The paper itself was like a mummy, brittle enough to crumble under the slight abuse given to the fabric, and flaking away into a dust when a more direct pressure was applied. The dust of it caught some air current, making the room smell old and stale, but in the comforting way of old bookshops with no air conditioning. The wood underneath was dry and dull, still riddled with flaking adhesives. He rubbed at the wood with oil, smelling of lemon and cedar, glistening pure on his long fingers, beading on the gloss of his nails, then a gentle lubrication and stroking movement with a soft cloth to get rid of the elderly scents and the tenacious pulp that still wanted to cling to the grain.

He'd had an old typesetter's drawer laying about that had come in handy for storing the small minutiae of his experiments. The large rectangle with its Edwardian hardware had multiple slots made to hold typeface for printing. It was in rougher condition than the wood of the fleam box, but there were a few areas that were not battered, a few areas where some typesetter had stroked the case again and again, softening the rigid rectangular ends of the dividers into something rounded and soft. It was these well worn areas that he couldn't resist covering with his hands, so it was these areas that he cannibalized for wood, cutting them to measurement with a fine craft saw, and smoothing away the rough edges with varying degrees of sandpaper, finally wet sanding with a 1000 grit that glided like butter in a meditational repetition, a Buddhist sutra, a nam myoho renge kyo of flesh and bone as he stroked back and forth. The pieces were carefully spaced and glued into place with mathematical precision, creating compartments that he tested with finger widths, eyes closed to concentrate the power of touch as he searched every surface for the smallest rough, finger pads knowing and clever as they caressed.

Only then did he line it. He searched his personal ephemera for something appropriate, something with the right aesthetic. The book was old, from the late 19th century, slightly naughty then, but absurdly sedate by today's standards. It was falling apart at the spine and the crease, gilding faded from the edges due to too many grabbing hands, and parts of the lower right corner were eaten away by time and scavengers. He'd kept it because it had a dramatic red cover, gilt titles and thick octavos that looked appropriately deconstructed and tragic next to his skull, but the marbled boards on the interior were just as dramatic, and more than once he had opened the cover just to get lost in the delicate, complicated swirl of ink, spinning like a prototype steampunk Mandelbrot set.

The boards were affixed by a simple starch adhesive, easily steamed off over a pot of water in the kitchen. The loosened sheets were carefully prised away with a little sculpting spatula, only to curl gently in his hand, warm and hydrated from the steam that engulfed it. The compartments were traced on onion skin, and the exact dimensions were cut with the wicked sharp tip of a utility knife until the perfect measurements were met. He'd nicked himself during the cutting process _accidentally or on purpose? Even he didn't know _ a drop of blood hitting the paper, adding more of himself to the red, gold and purple that now graced the wood and the bronze fixtures. A little drop of chaos. An artist deliberately marring a work of art so that they could not achieve perfection. It was there, the bottom right corner, a faint blush of rust and salt and every time he saw it he would remember the taste of himself as he sucked the red away from his index finger.

Such a beautiful box, but the components themselves had a story as well.

The spoon was silver, a smooth bowl that swept up in a lush curve, terminating in an elaborate flourish. This one was filched from mummy, and had graced his plate at more than one Christmas dinner. He kept it polished, and bent to lay on the table at an angle that would allow the cocaine solution to sit in a placid little pool, and support a syringe laying against it. A dedicated spoon meant that the mundane spoons in the kitchen remained unbent, and that meant Lestrade would no longer give him those long looks on the rare occasions he came to the flat. So tedious. He'd use the spoon, and after sinking into the drug he'd lick it clean, letting his tongue go numb from the solution as he warmed the metal against his palate. He'd withdraw it slowly in a move that was not quite fellatio.

The lighter was vintage, inherited, and he liked to think that the use he put it to had his father rolling in his grave.

The dual cigar holder was an aesthetic compromise. Antique medical instrument boxes were always elaborate affairs that hid the chilly practicality of the tools within. He personally liked the easy, disposable simplicity of the modern syringe, but it did not mesh with the rest of the box. The juxtaposition of removing the very modern clear and orange plastic from the antique aesthetics of the cigar holder was another step in the ritual, meant to shock the mind into a higher state of awareness. The cool phallic length of metal that swiveled and spread so neatly to dispense it was almost like jacking off, stroking that metal, a flick of his wrist at the tip, withdrawing the sharp that held nothing but memories of orgasmic experience.

The vintage oral medicine tin box held the plastic baggie of cocaine. The straight razor was a vintage folding model with an abalone handle, ammonite imbedded towards the bottom. The vial of green glass had a rubber stopper. The Syringes. 29 gauge needles. 30 units.

The ritual itself:

He always wore the same thing. Comfort of the body allowed focus on the mind, so he wore his pajamas as a uniform. The silky grey t-shirt was a gift from Mycroft. He usually burnt Mycroft's gifts, but in this case he took pleasure in using the gift in an act that Mycroft disapproved of. He'd stroke his own chest, barely chasing over nipple, a little thrill chasing as well, knowing that what he was doing would stick in his brother's craw. The blue robe was even silkier, an affectation, but a sensual one that felt fantastic against his skin when his nerve endings became over sensitized. He tried the drugs while naked once, wearing only the smooth robe, but the sensation was _too much, too good, distracted his mind, could not be contained _ so he settled for wearing it over cotton knit.

He'd removed the box from its hiding place in the speaker and sat it on the table in front of the sofa, next to a glass of water, a glass board, clean gauze, witch hazel extract and a cigarette. He smoothed a hand across the box's wooden top, polishing the bronze corners and their greenish patina with his fingertips, taking extra care, extra time- making this last time something special. He'd tacked in ribbons on each side to catch the lid so that it opened to 100 degrees instead of 180 degrees. Each piece was removed, always in the same order. The drugs in their ironic little tin. The razor. The spoon. The vial. The cigar holder.

Sherlock laughed, then started singing under his breath. "Rasoi e pettini, lancette e forbici, al mio comando, tutto qui sta, V'è la risorsa, poi, del mestiere…" A viewing of the implements, like the factotum laying out his tools. If John had a bit more sense of the perverse and fewer scruples he'd enjoy that analogy. "Bravo Sherlock. Bravo, Bravissimo."

The tin was opened and the little baggie of the type only used by jewelers and drug dealers was pulled out. The cocaine was tipped onto the glass and evaluated for color to try to deduce the cut. A small taste helped with the same, and let him know the strength of the drug, and how much he should use in the solution. A bit of white on the end of a finger, touched to tongue then a slow suck in. His taste buds searching for information, the cocaine, vitamin b-12, ephedrine, something else practically flavorless, until the taste was gone and all that was left was the slow suckling of his index finger and the gentle hollowing of his cheeks.

Razors weren't really necessary when you were using it intravenously, but the motions involved- opening the razor with the arc of his thumb, shaving the cocaine with precision to make fine powder of the larger granules, the repetitive _tink tink tink _against the glass was just another way to draw out the ritual and make the moment significant. He would cut the coke in one direction, scrape it into narrow lines, and approach it from the other side until chopping any more became a lesson in futility. It was almost...soothing. Then he would withdraw the razor, bringing the blade to his mouth to lick clean, the flat of his tongue against one side of the blade, and then the other, like a living strop. He hadn't cut himself yet, and he wasn't quite sure if that was a disappointment or not.

Then, his favorite part.

He opened the hinged end of the cigar case, pulling out one syringe before closing the case and putting it back in the box. The syringe still had its plastic cover, a medical condom that crinkled beneath his fingers. Clean sterility and variable symbolism that he loved to get dirty, the penultimate in thumbing his nose at authority, making the moment giddy and jittery with anticipation. It wasn't quite a fetish, he was familiar with his own psychology in a way no one else was, but it did inch pleasure down his sternum in a warm push that left him flushed, expectant and half hard. The orange cap, a lurid color that he looked away from in different contexts, was removed and put in a bowl that peeked out from under the sofa, to join more caps, shell casings and other dubious detritus left over from boredom and experiments. The needle pierced the water in the glass with a ripple and visual displacement, that first pull back on the plunger _always slightly sticky at first _ then the smooth glide as it lubricated, five, ten, twenty units sucked up and squeezed into the vial like a whirlpool.

Cocaine was scraped off the edge of the glass in a thin line, into the vial where it sank like granules in a snow globe. He topped the vial with the rubber stopper and shook the solution to dissolve the drug, stopping to turn it and watch the powder disappear into fog, frowning at some of the non soluble particulates that swirled around.

He unwrapped the paper from the cigarette and tore off a small amount of the filter, its synthetic strands tearing away in a long hank. The filter piece was placed in the center of the spoon to catch the non-soluble particles and limit the chances of cotton fever. The cocaine solution was poured over it, emptying the vial, then vial to mouth where it was licked, tongue running along the edge, then dipping down to explore as much of the glass as possible, sucking up every bit of the bitter, medicinal liquid it could find as he tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He could feel the curious numbness of his teeth and gums, throwing the sharp spike of sensation he felt in his chest into a harsh chiaroscuro that kept time with every beat of his heart.

The lighter was mostly there to brass off his father, and perhaps as a nod to convention, because you didn't need to cook coke. You didn't need to cook heroin either, but the heat helped break down the stickiness of the tar, and a junkie in need of a fix wanted _nownownow_ instead of time wasted pushing little brown bits around in a spoon. Cooking cocaine changed the nature of the high, took the edge off and twisted it into something softer and lest like a fist in the gut. If he cooked it before he shot it, it would be a smoother ride, but there would be no auditory distortion, no sharp shock of a moment where his brain went _oh_. The difference between a rough bareback fuck and making love.

Unheated was so much _more_. If this was going to be his last high, he wasn't going to use the lighter, he was going all the way.

So the lighter is bypassed and he goes for the syringe, running the cool plastic of the barrel against his lips, not a kiss, but a secular benediction. He places the needle against the filter, sucking up the solution, filling the void - a metaphor he is fully cognizant of. And he holds the needle up to the light, flicking it with a finger, watching air bubbles effervesce like carbonation fizz. He knows that the bubbles aren't dangerous, but he likes to see them burst into nothing, until the liquid is still and silent in the calm before the storm.

He doesn't tie off.

Some people do. They like the strip of rubber that wraps around and pinches the skin as it's pulled taut, or a belt tightening down notch by notch to plump the skin and the blue veins pulsing underneath, but his mind shies away from using anything that holds him like that. _No straps, no [redact]…_He has good veins, obvious veins that are close to the surface. The pump of an arm, the thump of a finger, and a hard grasp of his inner arm are all it takes to make the vein prominent enough to use.

The skin of his inner elbow is so thin, smooth and so pale that it barely pinks as he stimulates it to get a vein. He can't help but lightly run the pointed tip up the forearm, slightly indenting and stroking the flesh there, sometimes leaving a little red line in its wake, like a Wartenberg wheel testing for sensation. He knows which vein he'll use. He usually jumps around so he won't collapse one, but the little bump of flesh just inside his inner elbow, the median cubital vein, is his favorite, and since this is his last time it doesn't really matter if he's doubled up on it. There's a moment of anticipation as the needle rests against the blue that stands out against the pale. He draws it out, but not for too long, just enough to make that first slide extra delicious.

When the needle slides in, that initial breach of skin, relentless penetration of metal _doesn't hurt never hurts good god _ is so right, so good and it's only force of will that keeps his eyes from rolling up, rolling closed on a _yesyesyes_, because he is so close, wants it too much.

He'd told John that he was married to his work, and let John assume that he was something close to asexual, because it was easier than explaining this. The truth was that he was a Kinsey four, but any sexual impulse that he had was completely subsumed by the drugs. Detection may be his wife, but the ritual was his mistress, and the drug itself destroyed his previously normal sex drive. He could get an erection, but he didn't need sex when this mimicked sex so completely. In moments of blacker humor he would think that he was fucked by a three inch dick on a regular basis. He tried to stay away from the blacker moments he didn't want to think about why sex had become anathema. He didn't…

He uses the 29 gauge because it is small enough to make entry easy, but large enough to take a thick solution if he wants it.

The needle slides in slippery and feels right, but he pulls back on the plunger by one or two units, watching the beautiful backwash of blood into the chamber, a sexy parabola of red that tells him he has a vein. Golfballing, missing the vein and injecting anyway, means a painful, large lump and no high, and no _completion_, so he is careful there.

Sometimes, he is confident, and plunges it all at once. Sometimes, that's how he wants it, hard and fast, wants it so much that he's shaking with it. He sends it home with a quick jerk of his thumb, reveling in the way the tension of the plunger dissipates as the solution enters his bloodstream with a whoosh, and if the solution is thick enough, he can watch it travel up his arm, time it exactly when it will hit his heart. That's why he picks his right arm, because he can't see the impending explosion in his left, can't feel the drug crawling its way to climax.

Sometimes, he doesn't know the drug as well as he would like, and chasing that high is like playing chicken. It is a fine line to straddle. Too much of the drug can lead to death, but too little is a vicious tease that doesn't take care of the craving and leaves him mentally blue-balled and aching. On those occasions, he pushes home ten units, waits. Ten units, waits. Then the rest as he can take it.

Both are good. Both can be right. But right now he needs it hard, fast now, _fuck_, and he doesn't care that the solution might be a little too strong, a bit too much, because that's adding another level of sensation, adrenaline dumping into his system, heartbeat escalating before the drug can trigger its own tachycardia, and playing chicken had never felt so good before. That needle, drawn back before the drugs hit, placed on the table. A finger in the crook of the elbow, placed against the entry site, and then the arm folded over it before raising the entire forearm/finger/bicep sandwich into the air.

He felt the drug traveling, median cubital vein, draining into the axillary vein, and he could no longer feel it, but he could time it, and the drug was suddenly like the thrum of a bass and a hand tightening his heart to the music, then it was there in his head. Tinnitus kicked in and the real audio track fluxed the room moving like a jitter in the horizontal of an old tube TV as he slumped back, spine going liquid and soft as the hot rush of the injection spiraled through him like a waterspout, removing the structural integrity of bone and muscle. _Andante, Andantino, Moderato, Allegretto, Allegro._ He sucked in a breath, then another, waiting on the exhale. Waiting on the full force of the tidal wave that was building and building to a huge crest _maybe too much, so much_ heart thundering now, eyes blinking against the visual distortion, blinking against the need to clench them because it was coming, coming…

Waiting for everything to coalesce...

The implosion of thought, vision briefly inverting into photo negative before the explosion outward that enveloped the room in light; the tense exhale like he'd choked on ether; the iron taste exploding on his tongue as he bit the inside of his cheek, biting down on a whimper as the dopamine flush penetrated every part of his mind, synapses connecting, firing like rockets, like a star going nova. Data lining up and slotting into place like a perfect game of Tetris.

It was…acceptable.

When John came back to the flat it was only half lit, the lamp in the corner casting a yellow light on Sherlock, who was slumped into the sofa, staring at the ceiling with his fingers steepled. It was a common position to find him in, but there were some small differences that told John that this was different, small differences that made a dent in the anger John was trying to shed, and the hurt that still lingered. The room, the room was different too. Some things were shifted on the shelves, a sheaf of papers that butterflied across the carpet where they fell. The front was pulled off the speaker, leaving an empty cavity. The knife from the mantle was embedded in the sofa table next to a claw hammer.

_And there was a box._

He could tell that the box had once been a pretty thing. Long dark wood with fiddly metal bits attached. It was in parts now, two larger parts that had been ripped apart at the hinges with the claws of the hammer probably acting as a lever, leaving a twisted mess. There were rectangular wood slats, splintered and broken, scattered over the rest of the table, pieces of a semi-familiar paper shredded and torn around them.

It was destruction of a symbolic kind that John couldn't follow completely, but he could find the underlying meaning.

"All gone, then?"

"I asked Mrs. Hudson to take out the trash."

"I'm sure that went over well."

"I think she thought I was ill."

John considered that for what it was. A statement of fact? An admission? Looking at the trash that was scattered, he couldn't bring himself to care. "Are you?"

Sherlock didn't answer immediately. He tapped his fingers against his chin as he considered the question. "I'm not…sick."

"I never said you were."

"Thank you for that."

Sherlock seemed to have more to say, but was taking his time over what to say, which was strange, because words usually just poured from his mouth with no filter. His face was blank, so there was no help there. John just sat, sensing that this moment had weight, and not wanting to push.

"I'm not sick, but I do need…"

Sherlock trailed off, searching for the right word. The man was a walking thesaurus, and he couldn't find the right word.

"I'm going to need your help, John."

It was an admission of weakness, one that John had never expected. Not from a self-proclaimed sociopath. Not from Sherlock. "Anything. Whatever you need, you know that."

"I know," said Sherlock, who scowled in annoyance anyway. "This is very tiresome, John, you have no idea." The scowl almost made John smile, because he suddenly had an inkling of what a five year old Sherlock might have looked like. "I don't _do_ people."

"Ha. Good thing I'm not people, then."

"Yes. Quite."

"Also, good thing that I didn't say the first thing that was going to come out of my mouth."

Sherlock just quirked an eyebrow in question.

"I was going to say something like 'well you can do me instead."

Sherlock grinned but went back to contemplating the ceiling and didn't say a word.

John stood up and stretched his arms, his right extending further over his head than his left. The wound didn't twinge any more, but his range of motion, while not seriously impeded, was slightly stunted. He rolled his head on his neck, trying and failing to get it to crack.

He made his way to the foot of the stairs before Sherlock spoke again. He didn't turn around because he sensed that this was not something that Sherlock wanted to say face to face, so for the second time of the night Sherlock spoke to his back.

"You said anything."

"Yeah."

"Which means to any extent."

John shrugged his good shoulder. "I know what it means." He could practically hear Sherlock's eyes roll in his head.

"When I said I needed help, I meant it. And it won't be sweetness and light."

"Not exactly sunshine on your best day, are you?"

Sherlock ignored him like he hadn't spoken. "I need to know, John. When you said anything. I need to know how far you're willing to go."

John thought about Kandahar, and his shitty little bedsit. He thought about a gun sometimes left in a desk drawer, and sometimes removed in the middle of the night. He thought about pink, and a cane, and being able to run and laugh, actually _laugh_, for the first time in forever. He thought about five pips, and a pool, and a friend too stubborn to leave.

Honestly, he didn't really have to think about it at all.

"I think," he said, as he started up the stairs, "that you already know."

(Thank you for reading my first Sherlock fic. Reviews mean a lot to me, so please take a moment to leave some feedback.)


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks to my betas, Vector_Nyu, Grassle, and Omletlove, who made this possible. Warning: BDSM themes

* * *

><p>Within this frail crucible of light<p>

Like a chrysalis contained

Within its silk oblivion.

How lucky is this little light,

It knows her nakedness

And when it's extinguished

It envelops her as darkness

Then lies with her at night.

Loveliness like this is never chaste;

If not enjoyed, it is just a waste.

From The Rape of Lucretia

Composer: Benjamin Britten

Librettist: Arnold Duncan

* * *

><p>It was Phillip Glass's Sonata for Violin and Piano today.<p>

John entered the flat and could immediately hear the mournful strains of Sherlock's violin being coaxed into the same malaise that seemed to be swallowing Sherlock. John sighed and squared his shoulders before trudging up the stairs and entering the flat. He knew Sherlock had probably heard him at the door, but the music continued even as he tossed his keys in a dish, a discordant clang that was at odds with the haunting lament Sherlock was playing with a taped piano accompaniment. Sherlock barely looked up before his eyes fluttered shut again and he turned in place, presenting his back and one shoulder to John. John could just make out the crescent of his eyelash, and the plane of his cheekbone. Sherlock was wearing a thin T- shirt, and John could see every movement of the bow in the flex of the fine muscles of his traps, delts and lats under the fine knit. Perfection of the human machine.

Sherlock was brilliant like a diamond, and John had seen too many people brought low by less than what Sherlock had been playing with.

Harry had been like that once. Not Sherlock intelligent- no one was, but she had been alive and vital and had taken pleasure in things that weren't at the bottom of a bottle. John hadn't considered her drunken clubbing a problem in the beginning. It wasn't as if they had a history of alcoholism in the family, just prescription pill popping and benign neglect from a flighty artist of a father, and the platitudinal admonishments of a schoolteacher mum. Nothing that most people hadn't grown up with. Even coming out had been a bit of an anti-climax for Harry- John's military plans had created more of a stink.

She'd been considered odd and occasionally depressive before her formal diagnosis, and John's resentment surely didn't help, but that was supposed to be managed with therapy, psych drugs, something rational and medically approved, not...

So he hadn't noticed when a few drinks with the girls had turned into nightly drinks with the girls, and then eventually leaving the girls behind. Finally, she had stopped going out altogether, since alcohol was cheaper at home, and there was nothing to interfere with the drinking, and no platform to showcase her irritating social awkwardness.

She hid it well at first. They talked on the phone more, managing to cover up the fact that they met less. She called him earlier and earlier, and never in the evening. She sounded brighter and happier than he'd ever heard. Everything was going swimmingly with Susan or Mary or whoever the girlfriend was at the time. Everything was fine, fine, fine.

It was too bright and happy. False. She didn't work that way, never had.

But he still didn't catch on, until one day he ran into Margaret? Margery? He ran into her in the middle of Tesco's (horrible things always happened at Tesco's), and was alarmed at the bags under her eyes, and the fragility of her face, which crumpled like she did, against his coat. Tears and snot and heaving gulps of air against his chest in the middle of the aisle as he frantically looked around, patting her back in an awkward there-there, and he had no idea what was going on until she'd started pouring out her problems with Harry.

Harry.

He still felt gut sick thinking about it, even now. He didn't like to think about the fact that he had missed so much. And him an almost-doctor. His own family. His sister.

John paused, dithering. Should he say something to Sherlock? He wasn't sure what, though. He wasn't going to apologise for demanding sobriety from his friend. And Sherlock's quick dismissal and about-face had been a concise way of indicating just how much Sherlock wanted to speak to John.

Well Sherlock could stuff it, because John wasn't letting anything of his get into that state again.

John stuck his chin in the air and went up the stairs to his own room.

He thought he only imagined the accusatory bent the music had taken as it followed him up the steps.

This had been going on for a week, progressively getting worse and worse. They were between cases and everything was "boring, tedious, dull, insipid, tiresome, stupid," and about a hundred other synonyms for what amounted to the same thing. It had been two weeks since Sherlock had thrown away the detritus of his habit and the drugs themselves. John didn't fool himself that Sherlock hadn't taken a last hit. He'd been too bird bright and practically vibrating with tension from the high, but John wasn't going to quibble over one final injection when Sherlock was quitting for good.

John didn't fool himself into thinking that Sherlock had quit for him, either. Drug use didn't work that way. You quit for yourself or you didn't quit at all. Sherlock had been changing since John had known him, taking the raw potential everyone saw in him and forming it into the current work in progress- everyone had commented on it. The decision to quit had probably already been made, even if Sherlock wasn't really aware of it on a conscious level. John had just given Sherlock the excuse he needed.

And Sherlock wouldn't have lied about something like this. Not that Sherlock didn't lie. He lied fairly regularly, but not about something he considered trivial and mundane. And he definitely considered drug use trivial and mundane. He lied about meeting people at goddamn pools, not sobriety- that would be a waste of time and effort. In fact, Sherlock's problem was that he was usually entirely too truthful at awkward times. A common side effect of...

'Your mouth looks too small now...'

'Considering the state of her knees...'

'Psychosomatic limp...'

"Gay."

John cringed.

He'd told Sherlock that he'd help, but John wasn't sure what to do, since Sherlock wasn't talking about it at all- was mostly ignoring him. For the past few days he'd been lost in increasingly sad or frantic music.

Music, he'd found, was Sherlock's emotional barometer.

Sherlock's face, with all of it's strange alien symmetry, was usually inscrutable, even to John. But what his face didn't reveal, the music did.

When John first moved in he had thought that Sherlock was a violin hobbyist that would play the occasional Mozart, but Sherlock's life revolved around music, just as much as murder. Sherlock did play Mozart occasionally, and other pieces that John recognised from his own time playing the clarinet. Some Brahms, definitely. Mendelssohn, yeah. Some pretty, flirty piece he'd heard in a film or three but couldn't remember the name of. But Sherlock was serious about the violin, and more than once John had entered the flat to a furious Sarasate that amazed him with its brilliance. Sherlock had almost scared him then- not because of his virtuosity, no, but because of the look on his face- fierce, haunted, pursued. It was at odds with the music.

People who considered Sherlock an emotionless robot had obviously never heard Sherlock play, and had never heard Sherlock play Paganini. Sherlock wasn't the most technically proficient with the Caprices, which probably irked him, but he played with such passion and emotion that his skill could not be denied. Sherlock loved music, got lost in music, played like he was in pain.

And it wasn't just the violin.

Sherlock's digital music collection was housed in a terabyte external hard drive with another as backup. His CDs were kept in a large cupboard, and never tossed around with the lassez-faire disdain he used on almost everything else. John had gone looking once, early in their association, thinking to find some classical to play, and was amazed by the variety. There was classical, yes, but John was familiar enough to know that most people chose a genre or two that they really liked, and stuck with that. Sherlock had it all, though, separated by genre, and then by composer and artist. And then there was jazz, and blues, and klezmer and bhangra. Rock music and punk and really gay 80's pop.

Sherlock had everything and anything, and John became an expert at reading Sherlock through his musical choices.

This past week...

Sherlock played the violin like a fighter. The next day, like a funeral dirge.

The day after that...he didn't play the violin at all.

Nor the next day. Nor the next.

John was a doctor. He knew the signs of cocaine withdrawal. They weren't the dramatic physical symptoms of an opiate low, no Trainspotting moments for Sherlock, but in many ways they could be worse, especially for someone who prided themselves on mind over transport- cocaine withdrawal was all in the brain. Depression, anxiety, agitation, suspicion. He'd fucked with the re-absorption of dopamine in his brain, and it would take time for his head to get back to normal.

For a given value of normal, anyway.

John knew the clinical signs, but when Sherlock stopped playing the violin, he knew things were coming to a head. He was brooding on the sofa, listening to CDs.

On Monday, Sherlock was playing Arvo Part's Cantus- funereal and haunting. On Tuesday, Berg's Wozzeck- easily some of the most disturbing music John had ever listened to. Wednesday, Jim Thirlwell's Descent Into The Inferno- the voice of a devil. Thursday, Devotchka, Dearly Departed- depressing as all hell, and the blank look Sherlock slanted his way when John walked in the door gave him the willies, a creeping sensation down to his bones that raised the hair on his arms in a fear response that he thought had died due to attrition. There was something deep there. Dark and ugly, and it made him want to hit things to make Sherlock better, because this was as close to dead inside as John had ever seen him.

Friday...Christ. Friday John came home to a war zone.

When he walked in the door he could hear the discordant crash of guitar and drum, the alien bend of a synthesizer, quick and furious. There was a scattering of sheet music that he stepped around as he walked up the stairs. When he opened up the door he was hit with a wall of sound like an angry fist, barely human vocals vibrating with nihilist rage. He registered the noise first, then the mess. Books and papers had been rifled through with little regard for order, some torn from their shelves, some ripped in two. Projects that had been labeled in-progress had been swept aside, and broken beakers decorated the floor and tables.

John crunched through one, doing a slow turn in the middle of the room to take in all of the destruction. One chair, thankfully not his favorite, had a gash in the back that was hemorrhaging stuffing and a spring torn from its mooring. Knives, probably all of the ones in the flat, decorated the wall in a pattern around the grotesque happy face that was already there. The guest mugs were tossed in the fireplace, shards of ceramic decorating the grate like headstones.

John gaped at the mess, but wasn't actually surprised. He'd expected Sherlock to cave in at some point, and given his penchant for melodramatics, this was not the worst case scenario John had built up in his head.

He was looking for the remote to turn off the blaring sound when he finally found Sherlock. He'd thought that the throw blanket had been laying oddly where it was tossed in front of the sofa, but it was actually Sherlock wrapped up like a cocoon.

John ignored the noise, which seemed to be reaching a crescendo of American punk angst, and fell to his knees next to Sherlock, who didn't even look up to acknowledge him.

"Sherlock?" It was a stupid question, since the music was turned up so loud and John had practically whispered it, but Sherlock's eyes flickered towards him for a moment before returning to their fascinated perusal of the wall. The blanket tightened around him a fraction.

The music suddenly came to an abrupt halt, and John breathed a short lived sigh of relief before the same music started again- must be on a loop. Sherlock could have been listening to the same angry ranting all day.

"Sherlock."

John reached out but didn't touch him, instead he hovered a hand over Sherlock's arm, shoulder, chest, wanting to touch but not sure if that would help or hinder his effort to understand what was going on.

The music wasn't helping. It was too loud, too angry. The singer's voice was distorted almost beyond recognition, except for the repeated refrain of 'I hate everything that is not myself.' John found it disturbing, considering the state of Sherlock and the flat.

"Please?"

Sherlock gave him a look that withered, then suddenly flounced up into something that wasn't quite a kip-up, but had him on his feet anyway. The sudden spasm of movement surprised John, and he fell back a bit. Sherlock had retained the duvet, and was now at the window, staring into the late afternoon, trailing the blanket behind him like a ghost's shroud. He was agitated, but trying not to show it. Sherlock normally paced when he was bothered, but now he only twisted those long fingers in the fabric wrapped around him, wringing it.

John finally found the remote for the player and hit the Power button, abruptly ceasing the cacophony in favour of a tense silence.

John still didn't know what to say, but that didn't matter, because the moment to speak was upon him.

"Sherlock..."

"Save me your insipid platitudes."

"You're repeating yourself. That's the tenth insipid in the past two days."

"Well if everything wasn't so-"

"What, Sherlock? What?" John knew that Sherlock would get increasingly bitchy, but it didn't make the lashing out hurt any less. Besides, Sherlock thrived on argument, so John didn't fight the instinct to rebut at all. "Insipid? Boring? Like I'm boring?" John crossed his arms and tapped his chin, pretending to think. "Oh, I know...juvenile. Isn't that what you called me yesterday?"

"Sophomoric." Sherlock was pacing now. Quick strides of those ridiculous legs as he gazed into his own head, blanket whipping behind him when he turned, the dramatic twat.

"And name calling isn't? We both know what this is about. No need to take it out on me."

"Oh, yes. 'We both know what this is about," Sherlock parroted, "and yet you once again fail to grasp the point." His glower was typical.

"Fail to...I'm not a damned mind reader!"

"You told me anything! Anything at all, you said." Sherlock was building up a head of rage. He span towards John and ran one hand through his hair, making it stand up in flippant Lynchian disarray. "But you haven't delivered at all, and I'm..."

"I'm supposed to become your punching bag while you dry out? Is that your definition of help?"

He'd said anything. He'd meant anything. But not if the cure was worse than the disease. Not if Sherlock traded something monstrous for becoming a monster.

"Don't you- Can't you-" Sherlock seemed to find the end of his tether and snap it, because suddenly Sherlock was coming at him, Sherlock was pushing him, hands on John's shoulders and shoving him, and John couldn't believe it, couldn't stop himself from ingrained reaction, couldn't stop the need to defend himself. John grabbed Sherlock's wrists with both hands, but Sherlock struggled like a wild thing, so he pushed his knee into Sherlock's abdomen, taking that momentum to propel his weight into Sherlock, managing to stumble them over the table and into the sofa with Sherlock pinned under him in a tight hold, and John was just beginning to freak, just beginning to loosen his hands when he got a look at Sherlock's reaction, and-

"Oh." He hated it when Sherlock was right and he was wrong, because God, God, he had been stupid, so stupid, and Sherlock was...

"Yes," Sherlock hissed as he saw the cresting light of comprehension in John's eyes. Sherlock's own eyes had given him away. Grey eyes, pupils dilating without the benefit of drugs, ringed in a dark hue like a Hubble nebula ringed in space, expanding with the universe.

And his mouth, that mobile bow of pink that was usually curled into a sneer or ironic smile when not flattened into a line, that mouth was parted and red and wet.

"Jesus." John suddenly realised where he was, how he was, and released Sherlock's hands, aborting the wave-like movement Sherlock had tried against his whole body. John rabbited over to the far end of the sofa, running his fingers through his hair, trying to make sense of bizzarro Sherlock and his own -carried away, too physical, too much - reaction. "You don't want me to be the punching bag at all. You..." John trailed off into a small laugh that had a touch of hysteria and absolutely no humour. He knew what Sherlock wanted. Knew it from the deep tug of reciprocity in his gut just how Sherlock wanted it, sense and muscle memory filling in the blanks of how it would be.

He couldn't do this again. Couldn't open himself up to this, not when Sherlock was so...

Sherlock lay where he had landed for a moment, glaring, awkward and hot, before levering himself up to lean into the arm of the sofa. The blanket was still miraculously with him, and he tightened it round like it had been when John had first found him. Sherlock's eyes were boring into him, and John was trying not to look, but John could feel it, and the phantom feeling of all of Sherlock pressed against him, the ghosts of Sherlock's wrists in his hands as he clenched down on him, and...

"You're trying to talk yourself out of it."

"There's nothing to talk myself out of." There wasn't. He wasn't stupid, whatever Sherlock said on a tear. Sherlock might think he needed this now, but what happened when John wasn't enough?

John had divorced himself from that world entirely- having nothing was better than having bread and water while looking with envy at the feast laid out for everyone else. He had a small part of Sherlock, and that trumped any fleeting pleasure he could take from this whatever-it-was that Sherlock was proposing. He couldn't- wouldn't- let himself get more invested than he was.

Not when Sherlock could find something else more interesting at any time. John didn't want to be a...failed experiment.

"You know exactly what I mean." Sherlock just stared at him, willing him to agree.

"I mean it. I don't..." John was shaky, and ran a hand through his hair. "I can't do this now."

"You think tomorrow would be any better? You might like to try fooling yourself, but we both know that you aren't...uninterested." Sherlock's eyes molested their way down John's front to hover below his waistline.

"Sherlock. I don't. I haven't..."

Sherlock sneered. "John Watson. Attractive but not stunningly so. A nice bloke, most people think. Lost his virginity at an early age to an older girl who liked to think she was corrupting the innocent. But you'd had enough stories from an older sister who liked to think she was shocking you with her behavior. So he tried it on, everything the girl wanted, and John Watson found he liked the power of being on top, liked...the accouterments. He dived into sex and its more esoteric related subheadings head-first- and found a taste for danger there. Addicted to adrenaline even then."

John had thought he was used to Sherlock pulling information from thin air, but it hadn't been turned on himself with such precision since that first meeting, and even then the assessment hadn't been so deeply personal.

"Not the receiving end, but giving, yes, that makes so much sense. A doctor, you see, likes to 'take care of others'. That's a phrase that covers so much territory, don't you agree?" He raised a supercilious eyebrow.

"How did you know?"

"We know our own. Don't pretend differently." Sherlock sniffed. "There are also clues if you know enough to look for them. You haven't recoiled from anything related to sadomasochism. Instead, you gave me an intrigued look when I mentioned the crop at our first meeting, then you actually showed up here, later. And you've been extremely comfortable around anyone with an alternative lifestyle that we've interviewed." Sherlock, lost in thought, spidered a finger down the line of his own cheek, and not for the first time John cursed the fact that Sherlock's hands were so expressive, so...

"But it goes deeper than that, even. You have a strong feeling of hierarchy, yet you automatically buck against anyone who challenges you for top status...look at your first meeting with my brother. You are a doctor acclimatised to field surgery during brutal conflict, yet you always err on the side of extreme gentleness. Most doctors of my acquaintance prefer brisk efficiency."

"Oh, c'mon..."

"You know you enjoy inflicting pain, so you take great steps to make sure you aren't the cause of it."

"It's not like that. I'm not a sadist. I don't think about my patients like- I don't enjoy-"

"No. But it has become habitual. You enjoy some pain, so you fear enjoying all pain."

There wasn't really anything John could say to that. It sounded so horrible when said out loud.

"You don't give yourself enough credit."

That was probably the nicest thing Sherlock had ever said to him. He knew, intellectually, that it was quite common, that there was nothing inherently wrong with it, but that didn't seem to stop the small bubble of shame that lodged in his craw whenever he thought of it. He'd taken an oath, even though he'd never been able to properly define harm.

Would it be harm, to give Sherlock what he wanted? Physically, it would be nothing that wouldn't heal. But mentally? He didn't know.

"Dear John, sweet John, dominant John, found himself going to clubs, meeting people, and shagging himself rotten to the tune of their cries."

John looked over at Sherlock, at the want that spread over his face for just a fraction of a second. John's mouth was dry, but he licked his lips all the same and tried to find the words as he wiped his now sweaty palms against his trousers. "I don't think..."

"Why'd you stop? Was it an accident?" John went to answer, but Sherlock answered his own question. "No, something deeper, something that keeps you from pursuing it, even now. Even though you've thought of this. Us." Sherlock gave him a keen stare as if he had just unlocked all of John's secrets. Probably had. "Ah."

"Ah?" The smug bastard. Didn't he know that John couldn't afford that kind of emotional tangle? He'd been fragile enough before pink had overthrown the natural boring order of things. He didn't need to go courting unrequited-

"You are a doctor, aren't you? Through and through."

John looked away. "You're guessing."

"We both know that it isn't just about sex."

John cleared his throat and replied because Sherlock seemed to expect it. "No. It's not."

"It was a good guess." Sherlock was pleased with himself, a far cry from the madman tearing through the room not ten minutes previously. As if John had given him a mystery. "It's about transcending the ordinary, but it's surprising just how few people realise that. They think they want a titillating shag, when what they really want is knowledge. That's how it is for you, isn't it?"

"And if it is?"

"You think I deduced it, but I didn't extrapolate from data John."

"No?"

"I hoped." Sherlock sat up, leaned forward and let the blanket drop away, as intent as John had ever seen him.

John could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise with the small thrill that danced through his central nervous system.

"Reaching subspace by pushing and surpassing perceived human boundaries to achieve enlightenment. When you think about it in that context, it almost becomes a humanist imperative, don't you think? " Sherlock focused on something John couldn't see and nodded to himself. "It's a powerful thing. Pity so few people take advantage of it." He looked pensive, almost lost for a moment before looking back up at John, wearing something that on anyone else would be called uncertainty. "Is that how it is for you?"

"Yes." Sherlock's powers of perception had never really frightened him before, not before this at any rate. The point of being a top was to not be vulnerable, to own someone else's vulnerability in your hands. Yet here he was, naked.

"You really do like to take care of others. Isn't it awful, being a therapist of sorts when none of your charges get better? Just marking time till the session is up and they come back just as naked and wrong as before. No growth, just hamsters on a treadmill hoping for a little slap and tickle before they die." Sherlock was looking at him, really looking at him, and John thought he saw a quiver of something there, like hope. All he could do is look back, stony faced, just the way he'd got through several military debriefs. Better that than seeing what he wanted to see, rather than what was.

But he couldn't stop himself from answering truthfully. "Yes."

"Isn't it terrible, knowing that you need to make each moment count, each movement memorable and worthy, when all they want to do is get into the thick of it so they can get off, as if the orgasm is the release?"

"Do you?" Just two words, but Sherlock would know what he meant. Is that how it was for Sherlock as well? Had Sherlock looked for something greater and found everything, everyone, wanting? Had he given up, like John? How did he know the disappointment of...

"I see it. I see it all the time. It's all good, John? Try none of it good. I don't eat because the food doesn't satisfy."

"Because they are stupid and ordinary."

Sherlock inclined his head. "Because they are stupid and ordinary."

"But-"

"You're never ordinary."

John snorted, despite the gravity that bore down on him. Even during a massive tectonic relationship shift, trust Sherlock to deny his ordinariness, but not his stupidity.

"You said anything," Sherlock said as he rose. "I don't need the drugs, but I need my perceptions challenged." He seemed to hesitate, looking for the right words, maybe the best way to convince him. "I don't want to be bored. I want you to think about that."

John didn't think that was what he was originally going to say, and could only shake his head in an inadequate denial that Sherlock just ignored. Ignored! Even though nothing could be the same between them after this.

High altitude free fall.

Shooting a man to save a patient.

The first crack of a whip.

"Think about it. And ask me tomorrow. You won't be bored either."

"Ask you what?"

But Sherlock didn't answer him, just looked at him with those almond eyes narrowed and his head tilted back exposing the column of his vulnerable throat, and John's brain shorted for a brief moment. When he came back to himself, Sherlock was already making his way to his room.

John stayed cornered on the sofa for a long time before shaking himself out of his stupor and crunching his way through glass to the stereo to see what godawful music had been playing. He'd never heard of it, and if it was something Sherlock only resorted to in that kind of mood, John wasn't sure if he ever wanted to hear it again.

He didn't see Sherlock at all the rest of the night. Not while he cleaned. Not while he pretended to watch telly. Not as he went to bed.

He didn't sleep for a long time. Instead, he stared at his dark ceiling and thought.

* * *

><p>Sherlock was already up when John came down in the morning. John hadn't slept well, but through the interminable twilight between sleeping and waking he'd marshaled his thoughts into a cohesive whole.<p>

Sherlock was…being creepy again. He was in a mushroom blue shirt with the sleeves rucked up, unfastened French cuffs flopping around his pointy elbows, one hand at his side, and the other tracing the contours of the skull on the mantel with colourless fingers. He looked like a bad audition for some modern avant-garde adaptation of Hamlet that would get rave reviews, but that no one with sense would actually like.

John couldn't resist, but it wasn't a Hamlet quote that came to mind. "Webster was much possessed by death, and saw the skull beneath the skin."

The amused look Sherlock sent him made John relax a small amount, the slight tangle of anxiety between his shoulder blades loosening. "Eliot, John?"

"Eliot, Sherlock?" John raised an eyebrow, and smiled in spite of himself. "I thought that you deleted everything that was useless."

"You are operating under the assumption that art is useless."

John probably should have been surprised- somehow, he wasn't.

Sherlock didn't stop there, but he didn't stop his consideration of the skull, either. "Should I be worried that you are dwelling on a poem that finds the pursuit of meaning through sex to be a futile endeavour? Made a decision then?" It wasn't anything in Sherlock's tone, or posture, none of that had changed, yet John fancied that Sherlock was nervous about his answer.

He didn't want to consider why that warmed him.

"Not yet."

Sherlock dropped his hand and turned to face him, taking in everything about John from head to toe and looking unhappy with his results. Something pinched and wary round his eyes.

"We need to talk about this," John said.

"So talk." Chin up. Arrogant. Bravado?

"Is this just another game to you?"

"Of course not."

"Because it can't be. Not to me. I stopped all that for a reason." Sherlock had been right about that. John had got bored with the variety, which had lots of acrobatics but little in the way of real human connection. He'd tried to find a partner in the scene, but soon resigned himself to the fact that the people he wanted for something longer term weren't in the scene.

The scene. A joke. A frustration. Sadness. In some ways the scene was a little too accepting. Everyone welcome, little verboten. It became a great refuge for people that needed honest mental help, but instead of getting that help they were able to bury themselves in domination games and pain. They didn't get better, instead, they entered a holding pattern with no end in sight. Since no one carried a sign that said mother-issues or daddy-damage, every hookup became a potential minefield.

As a doctor, the sight of so many untreated open wounds was a visceral pain. He wanted to see a person come undone, be truly themselves with no artificial mask between him and the core of who they were as the pain stripped away layer upon layer of false faces. As those faces stripped, he found festering sores that he wasn't equipped to deal with, didn't want to deal with. Especially since the people involved didn't want to deal with them either. Ticking time bombs, the lot.

Then there were people like John. No trauma (previous to the war) that demanded feeding, no mental illness that was looking for stimulation. He was a soldier because he was an adrenaline junkie, not the other way around. He was a doctor because he liked helping people. He was a doctor and a soldier because he was a control freak. And he was...yes, incurably dominant. He liked the thrill of it, pushing someone to the far reaches of their threshold, carrying them along before finally, finally letting them fly. Owning them, making them own their pain, find what they were made of. In the few truly symbiotic relationships he'd seen, both partners grew and changed as if wrapped in a chrysalis. It was amazing. Beautiful. It was...out of his reach.

He'd never been able to find a partner like that. Gradually, he'd splintered away from that lifestyle. Forgot how much he liked their cries, the tang of blood in the air, the way a person could be completely revealed. Gradually, he'd forgotten how much he'd...

Damn Sherlock.

"I told you-" Sherlock started.

"Let me tell you for a change. These are my terms, you need to respect them."

Sherlock huffed and subsided.

"I can have sex without the scene, but there isn't such a thing as a nonsexual scene. Not for me."

Sherlock gave a barely perceptible start before moving to the sofa and collapsing into it. John imagined it was a stall for time as he assimilated that.

"I'm not lifestyle, Sherlock, whatever that means. I crave it, but I don't need it or want it all the time. I don't… I'm not one of those people that needs to wear leather to the shops at ten in the morning."

"I'm not asking you to."

"But I'm also not one of those people who can do this sort of thing with someone they like without it meaning something. Not anymore." John didn't fidget. The army beat that kind of thing out of you, but something inside was trembling on the edge of a cliff dive, a base jump, a high altitude low-opening thrill. "Not with you."

"You want a relationship." Sherlock said relationship like he was anticipating the taste of a battery, but he relaxed his shoulders, as if the weight he was expecting didn't come. He seemed...surprised? Was it so surprising then, someone wanting to be with him?

"If you want to pursue this, it would have to be within the terms of a normal relationship."

He wasn't sure what Sherlock was thinking. He had sunk back into the cushions, brow furrowed as he digested what John had to say. John would have preferred something. Some sign of yea or nay.

He must be barking, asking for a relationship at all. Sherlock was definitely the type that played BDSM games instead of getting therapy, though to be perfectly honest, he didn't think there was a therapist alive that Sherlock wouldn't devour like an intellectually superior shark.

But the John that had turned up his nose at the broken inertia of others had found himself broken in turn. Not by a person, but by circumstance - the choices of war were surprisingly easy - the options post-injury were not. He'd lost the underpinnings of all he was, adrenaline junkie, control monster, aid to the needy...

Sherlock had given him back much of what he had lost, but he still felt fractured, and the broken bits of John recognised a kindred spirit in Sherlock. Sherlock, who wanted BDSM like a Band-Aid.

But there had been something to what Sherlock had said, the way he said it, as if he understood.

Something that promised him the 'more' he craved, even though the map laid out in front of him also said 'here be dragons.'

As if John were the only one that could fill this hole in Sherlock's psyche.

Sherlock, who had already filled a hole in John's soul.

When all was said and done- it was Sherlock.

He hadn't been thinking about taking Sherlock up on his offer, that was decided the instant it left Sherlock's lips, no matter the outcome. He'd been thinking about his terms. And he needed terms. He needed to keep some sort of buffer between them so he could function if, no, when Sherlock decided that John was no longer-

Sherlock's lip curled in the corner, a slight sneer that spoke volumes. "Bit like emotional blackmail, isn't it?"

Sherlock would know. "Not at all. I told you what I need. You can always say no."

"Aren't you bothered by the idea of a relationship with a sociopath? High functioning or not, we aren't known for creating conjugal bliss. Quite the opposite, really." Sherlock looked unaffected, but John wasn't buying it. He always had to push for more information, even if the push wasn't in his best interests. Maybe especially then. Didn't mean he had no interest in the outcome.

John walked over to the chair facing the sofa and sat, threading his fingers together in the same way he'd seen Sherlock do. He couldn't stop the almost eager look from flitting across his face. He couldn't contain the almost giddy glee he felt at being able to finally call Sherlock out...

"Well. That might be an issue." John nodded his head to agree. "If you were a sociopath, that is."

...call him out on his bullshit.

Sherlock just looked on with a long face, settling back into the seat even more as he stifled a small sigh of derision. "John-"

"I'm not an idiot. And you aren't a sociopath. I can list the reasons why, but you already know them by heart, don't you?"

"Are you deducing me?" Sherlock smiled despite the way his eyes had tightened at the corners.

"If necessary."

"By all means." A benevolent wave of his hand said 'get on with it.'

"First, sociopaths cultivate charm as their main weapon of choice. They use it so well that most go completely undiagnosed." John ticked down one finger. "You can't be arsed to be charming unless it's needed. You are the opposite of charming."

"I'm charming." Sherlock's voice bled offence as if Anderson had offered to lick his shoes.

"Only as long as you need to be to get answers from a suspect. You said it throws your back out."

Sherlock blinked at him, trying to appear languid and bored, but the whitening skin on his knuckles gave him away.

"Second, your morality. It isn't the morality that everyone else is using, but you adhere to the standards you set for yourself. Almost obsessively so." Another finger ticked over.

"Third. You lie about things that might be dangerous, or to help others, but you never much bother, otherwise." Third finger down. "Strange, isn't it?"

"What?"

"A sociopath, not lying to emotionally manipulate everyone they meet."

"Emotions are boring."

"Wrong answer. Sociopaths love emotions- on other people. It's their main source of amusement, mind fucking. And you just warned me away from you, you daft git."

"Reverse psychology."

"Could have been," John agreed. "But it wasn't."

"I'm not a nice person, John." Sherlock was squirming now, and avoiding eye contact.

"But you care. Don't tell me any different, I won't believe you. You're a right arsehole sometimes, but not a deliberately cruel one, and that isn't the only criteria for sociopathy, anyway. Not even close. And you're an arsehole because you tell too much truth."

"John…" Sherlock could finally see where this was going, but there wasn't much he could do to stop it.

"Let's list the symptoms you do have."

"Does arsehole go at the top of the list?" Sherlock's tone was annoyed and exasperated, since he had already deduced the denouement of John's little lecture, but he was going along with it all the same.

"Why not?" John smiled, trying to take the sting out of it. "Arsehole."

Sherlock's responding smile was sarcastic.

"Brutally truthful. Stares too much."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

"Absurdly high pain tolerance, hypersensitive smell- your senses are skewed."

"How-"

"You don't often notice when you're hurt. I notice it, though."

"Maybe I've just built up my tolerance to-"

"Obsessive compulsive behavior. Obsession within a narrow field of interest. Texting over talking, predisposition to depression, literal interpretation of language, poor interpretation of body language and subtle social cues, poor grasp of physical boundaries. Eidetic memory. Should I go on?"

"Get to the point."

"It wasn't diagnosed until '94. It was often misdiagnosed as sociopathy."

Sherlock closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the sofa, revealing the bob of his Adam's apple. "Yes."

"So why didn't you correct the diagnosis? It's a neurological disorder, not a mental illness."

"How did you know? You aren't a psychiatrist. Nothing in your background screams mental health training."

John laughed. "God, no. You missed it. You always get something wrong. This is the same something you got wrong before."

Sherlock's head bolted back up in interest. "Your sister? Your sister is…"

"She's an arsehole too."

"Never got on."

"She was much worse as a kid, and I was jealous over the amount of attention she got. She's grown out of a lot of it, but she still self medicates. And you know how I feel about that."

Sherlock scowled. "That's why we're discussing this at all, really."

"You didn't answer. Why not change the diagnosis?"

Sherlock looked straight at him, eyes cool and hard. "No one pities a sociopath."

"I don't pity you now." John was straightforward. "You are the least pitiable person I know."

"Sociopaths are feared. What most people know about autism and genius couldn't fill a thimble even if you combined them. I made the obvious choice." Sherlock cocked his head. "Just ask Sgt. Donovan."

"Hmm."

"And who is to say that we aren't both right? There are often comorbid issues."

"I don't know if there is a neat little box to shove you into."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Now that we've shared confidences about our neurological requirements, maybe you can give me an answer."

"It's still boyfriends or just friends, I'm afraid."

"And this boyfriend thing. How does that work?"

Sherlock wasn't looking at him. John wished he would. This was the quicksand he didn't want to get into. "What do you mean?"

"Is it just to legitimise the sex for the sake of middle class morality? Friends with benefits?"

"No!"

"Or do you have designs of a more romantic nature?" Sherlock tried to look cool and arrogant, and succeeded for the most part, but his voice gave him away, tentative as it was, unsure.

John averted his eyes and didn't reply. Trust Sherlock to get to the heart of what John didn't want to discuss, to pick up on exactly what John wasn't saying.

His voice became amused at John's expense. "I hate the term boyfriend. It's weak minded and spineless. I prefer to think of us as…accomplices." .

John snorted. "If that's true, then we've been dating for six months."

"Haven't we been?" He raised his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth turned up.

John looked at him with incredulity. Was Sherlock really saying what he thought he was saying? He wasn't- "You were awfully apologetic at Angelo's that first night."

"I didn't have much libido that first night, either." Sherlock stroked one slim hand down the front of his shirt and raised an eyebrow, not in question, but a challenge that seemed to go straight to John's groin.

John sucked in a breath, cock beginning to thicken as Sherlock's eyes became intent. "Christ. Are you serious? Are we really doing this?"

Sherlock shrugged. "No bondage." He stood up, and John followed suit. He knew he'd have to take over, direct this at some point, but for right now he would follow Sherlock's lead.

Not that he believed it was happening in the first place. Denial made it much easier to give in.

"No bondage," he agreed. He was going to stick to his guns on his own needs, but right now he was willing to agree to anything else as long as Sherlock kept looking at him like an interesting corpse- which didn't sound right at all, but said fuck-all about the state of things at 221B.

Sherlock shied his gaze away from John for a moment, looking at the floor instead. "I mean it. It's…a deal breaker. Restraint by hand is acceptable." He took a step forward, capturing John's eyes again.

"Got it. No bondage." John's heart was beginning to pound.

Sherlock took another step as he catalogued his likes and dislikes. "I'm a bottom, but any past submission would be considered a statistical outlier, though I will follow orders that are designed to lead to mutual fulfillment." His hands went to his top shirt button, slipping it through the button hole with a minimum of fuss. It was possibly the driest, most clinical striptease that John had ever seen, but it was still the hottest, and those clever fingers hadn't even got down to bare skin yet. Sherlock didn't need to over dramatise the sexuality of stripping to make John's mouth go dry. "I respond well to corporal punishment."

Button.

"Electricity."

Button.

"CBT."

Button.

"Rough sex."

Sherlock took another step forward into John's personal space as he released the last button of his Paul Smith, revealing a swath of smooth chest, a constellation of freckles dotting the skin. John was close enough to smell the musk of his cologne, the faint chemical tang of a biocleansing agent, clean sweat. Sherlock.

"And…" Sherlock leaned his mouth into John's ear as he shrugged the foggy blue cotton off his pale, pale speckled shoulders, bringing his voice down, low and smooth like polished mahogany. "Medical play."

"Oh God."

Sherlock's hands went to his own belt even as he stared into John's eyes.

"No scat, no watersports. No other parties. No verbal humiliation, though dirty talk is always appreciated." John couldn't look away from Sherlock's eyes, though he heard the hiss of leather through the loops of Sherlock's trousers, and the friction of zip teeth coming undone, just as he was coming undone, dismantled piece by piece from the inside, replaced with a throbbing kernel of want.

John cleared his throat. "That opera you were playing two days ago. What was it?"

If Sherlock was taken aback by the oddity of the question, he didn't show it as he lowered his trousers to the floor, stepping out of them and kicking them away under the table.

"Britten. Rape of Lucretia. Probably the poorest of his libretto's, but -"

"Crucible."

Sherlock just looked at him, toying with the band of his boxer briefs.

"Your safe word. It's crucible."

Sherlock nodded once then skinned his pants down to reveal a long, pale cock, flushed pink and damp at the head.

He'd always looked so perfectly put together, even in his pyjamas, and nudity was no different. He was completely at home in his skin. John had imagined once, on a particularly bitter night spent indulging in sour grapes, that fucking Sherlock would be like sexing up a bag of antlers, but he'd been wrong. What could have been awkward angles and planes were lean muscle and whipcord tendon. Thin as a death's head, but the underlying architecture of his body was so, so very beautiful.

As soon as the briefs were kicked away Sherlock slid to his knees like the flow of water, looking up at a fully dressed John with expectant heat. "I like to have my throat fucked."

John felt the oxygen suck out of the room.

"Let's do something about that, shall we?" Sherlock's hands went to John's zip.

John's hands - God, what was he thinking- went to intercept them, taking Sherlock by the wrist and holding them away from his body. "Not yet. Not...yet."

"Why not?" Sherlock looked cross.

"When you shot up, did you get it over with as quickly as possible, or did you draw it out?" For all John knew, this was a one off. Sherlock could decide tomorrow that he was perfectly fine not dealing with John's squishy feelings. If they were going to do this, they'd do it properly so that John wouldn't regret squandering the opportunities handed to him.

"You can be remarkably perceptive about some things." Sherlock didn't make it sound like a compliment.

"Then lets stick to the pace I set, okay?"

"Not your submissive." Sherlock's nose went in the air, and John felt an absurd welling of something soft in his chest.

"If that's anything like not a housekeeper..."

"John."

John retained Sherlock's wrists, but went to his knees as well, and with considerably less grace. John moved into Sherlock, putting his mouth against Sherlock's ear. "I need you to trust me, or this won't work. Not for either of us." John pulled away slightly to look at Sherlock's face as he took the wrists he held and slowly moved them to the small of Sherlock's back. He looked at Sherlock's face and catalogued every hitch of his breathing, every distortion of pupil as he fixed Sherlock's arms against his lumbar region.

"You came to me to give you what you need."

"Then give it to me." Sherlock's words were haughty, defiant, but his eyes were asking for something elusive. Searching.

John leaned in closer, pressing his body to the one in front of him for the first time. There was nothing soft on Sherlock, but the skin that could look so cold was fever hot plastered against his front, the naked erection that pulsed against his fully clothed stomach was hard and moist. The sex musk of him surrounded them, salty in the air like brine or sea water.

"I'm going to give you everything. I'm going to give you almost more than you can take."

"Then-"

"But this isn't about your wants Sherlock." John's hand's tightened down enough that Sherlock would have bruises on his wrists."This is about what you need."

"I need-"

"You've never been very good at taking care of your needs."

"I took care of myself well before you arrived."

John deepened his voice in poor mimicry. "Food interferes. Breathing's boring. Oh, look, a shiny pill."

"Fuck you." Sherlock wriggled in his grasp, an equally poor parody of escape.

"I feed you. I clean after you. I entertain you-"

"Like a trained monkey -"His voice was scathing, but still no safe word.

"I shoot psychopaths for you."

Sherlock...went limp against John, shoulders slumping.

Brilliant.

"If you think that I can't take care of this for you..." John let a harder edge take over his voice as he pressed his groin hard against Sherlock, bucking up into that lean, furling body, pressing his cock into one hard thigh. "And in my own way..."

John transferred one of Sherlock's wrists so that his other hand held both, leaving his dominant hand free to trail over Sherlock's arse, pulling him in even harder, surprising a whimper out of him.

"Then you haven't been paying attention." John's free hand moved round to Sherlock's front, taking him by the base of the cock and squeezing until Sherlock started to vibrate like a tuning fork, a small movement that John felt everywhere they touched. "And you always pay attention, don't you?"

Sherlock nodded before dipping his head to rest against John's shoulder.

"Do you trust me?"

Sherlock nodded without looking up.

"Then trust me to do this for you." John nudged Sherlock's face up to his, to see if Sherlock understood, but Sherlock averted his eyes. "I can be what you need." John hoped he wasn't proved a liar.

Sherlock nodded again, but this time something seemed to unfurl inside him, something calm and certain. Something that wanted to believe. "Yes, John."

John closed his eyes for a moment to savour the exquisite moment. Those two words were like the detonation of a massive ordinance in the vicinity of John's chest, but he didn't want to examine the whys of that very closely.

"Tell me what you want."

Sherlock still didn't look up, and John could see something flicker in his expression. Something...

"I want to hurt."

"What else?"

"I want to love it."

"And?"

"I...I don't know."

John nuzzled into Sherlock's neck, sucking at the skin there, raising a small welt, before rubbing his stubbly cheek against the smooth skin of Sherlock's. "You are so beautiful. You don't even know how much."

Sherlock inhaled, trembled, as John spoke, closing his eyes as he sighed.

Jesus. This was going to be an even bigger mine field than he thought. Sherlock didn't just need his arse beaten- he was starving for simple affection.

"Gorgeous. You scare everyone away because you're brilliant, but that just makes them extra stupid." He'd give Sherlock what he needed. Pain. Punishment. But this too was something Sherlock seemed to need, and didn't even recognise. He soaked up the praise like a desiccant drew water, and fuck if that didn't tug at something John wanted to keep to himself. That small Pandora's box within him was telling him that it was too late.

But if it was too late- it was, it was- he was going to make it worth it.

"I'm going to give you everything you need. The things you know about. The things you don't."

John tightened the grip he had on Sherlock's cock until Sherlock looked up with a grimace.

"I am going to fuck your throat. I'm going to make you choke on it."

Sherlock's eyes were huge and clouded. Want? Trepidation? There was something else that John was afraid to examine, afraid to look away from, lest it disappear.

"I'm going to turn your arse red. I'm going to open you up and look at your insides. But most importantly, I'm going to take you apart."

"John." There was a damp patch forming on John's stomach where Sherlock had been pulled against him,.

"What's your safe word?"

"Crucible."

John released Sherlock's wrists so suddenly that Sherlock almost pitched forward before catching himself. John leaned back to rest on his own hands and tried to exude confidence, but his palms were moist with a mix of eagerness and worry as they made contact with the wood floor.

"Take out my cock." John spread his legs, just as obscene as if he had been fully naked.

Sherlock responded with gratifying alacrity, pouncing on John's zip. The button, the zip, both melted away. The boxer briefs were pushed down, the elastic band pulled under his balls. John was slightly larger than average, not oddly shaped or anything. The hair that nested around his cock was a bit darker than the hair on his head and kept trim. John was pretty fond of it, but Sherlock, Sherlock looked at his bits as if he were having a religious experience, was inhaling John's scent, which just made John plump up more, because God, God, was there anything better than having Sherlock worshipping at your feet?

Sherlock's spidery fingers were spread against John's hips on either side of his cock, slightly kneading. So much pale, so much pink. Sherlock's face washed of colour under the glare of the nearest lamp. Those lips which had nearly captured John the previous day, licked wet and wanting. John could feel the hot puff of Sherlock's harsh exhales against his skin, and he had to fight to keep his eyes open because this was too good to leave to the imagination.

Sherlock's tongue came out to swipe at his bottom lip one more time, then he moved with a rush, setting soft lips to the head, wet warmth to John's shaft, swallowing him half down before pulling back, pursing his lips on the upstroke to maximise the- "Fffuuu..."

John could feel the smirk that he could not properly see. Sherlock, gliding his mouth back down, taking a little more. Taking, instead of being taken, and being smug about it.

John grabbed Sherlock by the ears and the curls as he was halfway back up John's cock, and pulled him back down, hard.

God.

That mobile mouth, wrapped around the root of him, that throat, clenching down on the head as Sherlock fought to control his gag reflex. That first frantic sputter, moist evacuation of air, fighting to breathe through his nose just as he was fighting to swallow into a rhythm.

It was gorgeous.

John eased Sherlock halfway back up, but didn't withdraw his cock. Sherlock sucked in several breaths through his nose, hard, practically wheezing, but the eyes that were turned up to John were smiling and lax with desire, tearing up at the edges.

"You look unreal. Like a fantasy. People don't look like you in real life."

John pulled him back in with a roll of his hips, pulling him in by the hair and slackening his grip on the upstroke, getting into a casually brutal rhythm. Sherlock tried to keep up- swallowing on the intake, letting John hold his cock there for a moment to luxuriate in the pulsing constriction. The wet sounds on each thrust, the aborted coughs, the familiar gutteral glossolalia of a hard throat fuck...John had missed it, but this was better than any that had come before. Because it was Sherlock.

He reached down to Sherlock's face, feeling the cheeks alternately distend and hollow, rubbing at Sherlock's throat to feel himself in the bulge there as he plucked at Sherlock's bottom lip with his thumb.

"So good at this. You look so good." John couldn't resist thumbing at the tears that collected in the corners of Sherlock's eyes, streaming down to mix with the sweat that created a sheen on his skin. He raised one thumb to taste the salt and the sweet. John couldn't normally come from receiving a blowjob alone, but there was nothing normal about this - the control, the being devoured whole, with lips, with eyes.

Sherlock hummed at the praise, eyes fluttering closed as he also found a rhythm, falling into a pattern of flex and give that received John's cock with a minimum of resistance.

"Do you like it this way? Being used?"

"Mmm."

"Being hurt?"

"Mmmm." Sherlock would be hoarse and raw after this, but he was obviously loving the way John plunged into his mouth now, quicker, but more shallow.

John reached down to touch Sherlock, finding him hard and ready, lightly furred bollocks tightening in his grip. Sherlock was leaking copious amounts of pre-ejaculate, making the foreskin slippery against the head as John ran his fingers over and around, surprising loose a high pitched whimper. John immediately tightened a hand around Sherlock, squeezing hard.

"Don't come yet."

Sherlock grunted. An exclamation, a protest.

"You don't come till...oh fuck. You don't come till I say. And we aren't -" John gritted his teeth, his own balls drawing up, the fluttering of orgasm just beginning to encroach. "Ah...we aren't nearly..."

Nearly there...

"Nearly..."

John's breath came in short bursts, and it was suddenly too much- the pull on his prick, the sex smell heavy in the room, the sight of Sherlock blissing over being force-fed John's cock.

"Fuck, Sherlock! Fuck. I'm going to..."

Sherlock swallowed even harder, started bucking into John's thrusts, taking him harder, higher.

"Take it. Take it all..."

John clawed his hands even deeper into Sherlock's hair, losing his fingers in those soft curls to clasp Sherlock's skull, cradling it and stroking it even as he ravaged Sherlock's mouth, hips faltering, mind stuttering to a halt before everything seemed to fast-forward into orgasm and he poured everything into Sherlock's mouth. Red lips, soft lips, tongue stroking him, trying to get a taste of him, and oh!

Oh.

oh.

So...

Mmm.

It was a minute or two before John pulled away from Sherlock, still smoothing his hands in Sherlock's hair. He fell away from Sherlock's mouth with a dirty wet slurp, a string of saliva connecting them, wobbling in the air between lips and cock before stretching and breaking with a miniature firework pop.

Debauched porn star was an amazing look on Sherlock - working out the kink in his jaw, mouth a sexy ruin, just a bit of come at the corners, limpid eye fucking, flush from the face all the way down his chest, nipples hard and tight.

John closed his eyes and luxuriated in the afterglow while Sherlock waited, uncharacteristically quiet, cock uncomfortably hard and impatient.

John finally got his breath back enough to grab Sherlock to him by the biceps, pulling him until he was half sprawled on John, his breath fast and fluttering in John's ear, cock a hard presence against John's thigh, leaving a slimy trail on his skin.

"What I was trying to say..." John was barely whispering, but anything louder would have felt out of place. He turned his face into Sherlock's neck, nuzzling there with his nose. "Is that we aren't..." A kiss placed on the warbling pulse, the flat of his tongue tasting the beat . "Nearly..." Another kiss, this time to the corner of his jaw, nipping and wet. "Done."

First kisses are usually tentative things, but John plunged into Sherlock's mouth with his tongue. This was no soft tangle of lips, but an ownership of Sherlock's mouth, John fucking his tongue against teeth and gums, sliding it along Sherlock's, quiescent and willing. Sherlock tasted of bitter John and tea, and something almost herbal and sweet, like a Pimm's. John took Sherlock's mouth as if he could own Sherlock by force of will, make sure that Sherlock was claimed enough, willing enough, wanted enough, because...

John backed away enough to take Sherlock's bottom lip between his teeth and bite down, pulling away slowly, letting the flesh slide away before diving back in for more. He could feel Sherlock smile into the shallower kiss, so he took it deeper, counting the ridges of Sherlock's upper palate with a sweep of his mouth.

Sherlock's lumbar spine was supple under John's hand as he smoothed it down to take ownership of Sherlock's arse. He guided Sherlock against him for long moments, tonguing, rubbing, trying to imprint himself onto Sherlock, place his mark.

Cut him so deep he'd never be rid of the scar.

It really was much, much too late.

And John was a sick, sick fuck.

The kiss was a temporal anomaly, lasted forever, lasted not long enough, but eventually John pulled away enough to speak. "What's your safe word?"

For the first time since John had known him Sherlock looked...confused. Sexy, fuckable, visceral, wrecked- all of those things, but he wasn't quite tracking John anymore. Not quickly, anyway. Quite an ego boost, that.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock's brows gathered in the middle as a familiar pissy look started to take over. Counterintuitively, it made John want to grin.

"Crucible."

John bit at his clavicle, still grinning.

"Sherlock."

"Yes?"

"Get the crop."

* * *

><p>Yes.<p>

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Sherlock stood, legs shaking beneath him like a newborn colt's, naked arousal singing in the air between them. This was better than he expected. This was so...and John was so...The crop. The crop was...

Sherlock stumbled to the hall, and then into his room, grasping the door jamb on either side as he reeled momentarily. He shook his head, trying to clear it a bit. He didn't want to surface much, but he'd be damned if he was going to face-plant in this condition.

There. It was in the corner, propped up with an umbrella, a blowgun, a cane with the head of a snake devouring an apple, and a broken violin bow. Familiar black leather looped over itself, slightly worn from use, but not enough to be floppy and soft. The shaft was extremely flexible and returned to true with a delicious snap. The grip was rubber, pebbled with pea-sized nodules that sometimes squeaked against the black leather of his gloves. A sportsman's crop- no mere cheap toy, this.

Well used, familiar. Purchased far before [redact].

Sherlock hefted it, stroking the handle to appreciate the texture, when a hand came around his side. John didn't take the crop from him, though. Instead, he curled his hand around Sherlock's, pulling the crop against Sherlock's chest to hold it there. John's other hand came up to pet the small of his back. He shuddered, goosebumps flowering on his skin as John nuzzled his nose into the nape of Sherlock's neck.

"You are you know."

"What?" Sherlock was only half paying attention. The slide of John against his bare skin was distracting.

"Beautiful."

"John. Don't..." He didn't know what he was going to say. Deny it? Deny John?

"Your mind is like a prism. The way it refracts. I can't follow the full spectrum."

"My mind?"

"You have to know how much I want you, but your body is the least of it."

"John." For some reason, this was harder than any punishment his body could take. It hurt, but it also lifted something from him, leaving him lighter, but uncomfortable with the change, like the pins and needles of blood rushing back to a dead hand.

"This is a terrible idea." John was quiet, but there was a smile in his voice.

Very probably. But that didn't mean he could stop this. It was already set in motion. "I don't know why." Sherlock's voice was raspy and raw, like he had just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes, lighting one with the remnants of another. He did know actually, but there were too many variables to list that would lead to an unfavourable outcome, john unhappy with him john hating him john leaving john dead, but he wasn't sure what John would see as significant, and that was just ignorance of a different type.

John, just to be contrary, was lighthearted in reply. "Safe. Sane. Consensual." He laughed into Sherlock's shoulder blades, and pulled Sherlock against him into an even tighter one armed hug before relaxing his grip again. "We're never safe. Never sane, either."

Sherlock didn't have much to counter that.

"I don't see this being much different."

Sherlock gave up, smiled, tilting his head back to rest against John's shoulder. "Mmm. Yes. But isn't it sexy?"

That startled another laugh out of John. "What?"

"Our mutually assured destruction."

"Yes. Quite." John cleared his throat, and Sherlock could imagine the blush that was creeping over him. John's other hand slipped around his waist to rub soothing circles into Sherlock's stomach. It was...nice.

Sherlock forgot about the crop, the persistent erection, and held on to John. He wasn't sure where he'd end up, but he couldn't help but swallow around the soreness of his abused throat, and the lump that suddenly occupied it.

Something significant was happening, but for once he didn't want to examine it too closely.

"We were always going to end up here, weren't we." John's breath fanned out, feathering the curls at the base of Sherlock's neck, and Sherlock marvelled at how neatly John was reading his thoughts.

"It was always...a possibility."

"What's the probability that this all turns out all right?"

"Exceedingly small." His reply was quick and tart. And getting less truthful by the moment.

Another laugh. Genuine. Lovely.

"My favourite odds."

What a coincidence. "Mine too."

John kissed the back of his neck in a way that had nothing to do with possession and everything to do with things Sherlock usually left alone. And Sherlock had the sudden inkling that maybe he didn't control this thing between them.

Maybe he never had.

An alarming thought, but right then he couldn't bring himself to care.

Not with John wrapped around him like a cephalopod. Not when John led him to the bed.

Not when John had him crying out into the bedding, tearing at the sheets.

And not even later, curled up together in the drowsy aftermath, John stroking his hair.

* * *

><p>Please Review. It means a lot to me.<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

"But alas, alas!

A light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness comprehends it,

and suffers..."

from Billy Budd

Composer: Benjamin Britten

Libretto: E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier

A Light Shines in The Darkness

The pearl fishers duet from Les Pecheurs De Perles. The orchestra, superb. The baritone, very nicely done, though the singer is obviously beyond his musical prime at too early an age. When had he peaked? 1998, or 1999? He'd stumbled as Wolfram, but his Falstaff the next year had been glorious. Everything since had been hit or miss.

This was one of his better performances.

It was too bad about the-

"That's nice. What is it?"

John barreled into the room, shedding his coat and keys, smelling like the early autumn outdoors, cool menthol and sunshine_, had taken the long way around through the park, eaten roasted nuts, excessively jubilant, must have treated something bloody and/or sinister recently_. Sherlock didn't look at him, continued lying on the sofa in his preferred listening position, but he knew the smile that type of mood would put on John's face, knew that John would be grabbing his mug, _red, chipped in two places, off limits to Sherlock_, and putting the kettle on.

"Mmm. No. His melismas sound like the product of a petite mal seizure."

"Then why are you listening to it?"

"Everything but the tenor."

"Snob." The affectionate voice belied the mild insult. Not that insults mattered.

"Quite. His Salut Demeure from Faust was so terrible I would imagine that it drove many to suicide." Though with the way he butchered that exposed high C, _C5, 523.251 hertz of utter shite _- "Or manslaughter."

John laughed.

"If Lestrade approached me about his unexpected demise, I might find myself suddenly preoccupied with the need to wash my hair."

"And convince Donovan that you really are a serial killer?" John snorted, and Sherlock heard the sugar spoon tap against the side of his cup. Two sugars, John was definitely feeling upbeat; he usually had a doctor's disgusting habit of healthy living through denial. "Very Hannibal Lecter of you."

"You told me I should cultivate a hobby."

"Mmhm. You have a hobby now." John's voice went low.

Ah.

That tone, the one that raised the hair on Sherlock's arms. Sherlock had gotten to know the sexual nuances of John's voice better in the last few weeks. John's voice would dip into a deeper register, a slight gravelly quality that never failed to crawl over Sherlock's skin and nestle in his chest, an uncomfortable but not unwelcome squatter that signaled a segue into something new and fascinating. John hadn't repeated himself yet, was still feeling out Sherlock's triggers. But Sherlock didn't want to seem too eager- wasn't too eager. He didn't need this, but John was a tolerable alternative to boredom. A...hobby. "Do I? I was thinking apiculture would-"

"Get us evicted, yes."

Sherlock smirked, but the move was short-lived, because John was suddenly behind him, arm wrapped around Sherlock's shoulder, and his neck. His throat. Sherlock would have tried to break the hold, brought his arms up to do it, but John pulled his head back by the hair at his crown, pulled it taut at the temples, the eyelids, smoothing away the epicanthic folds, and Sherlock could feel cool pressure just above his collarbone. A knife. The very illegal half-serrated K-bar that John often kept in his short boot.

John had a knife to his throat.

Sherlock would have said something, but even the act of swallowing flexed his throat into the wicked sharp edge of the blade.

"Don't talk. Don't move."

John's voice was normally so mild, but it could become hard like a fist, carrying a ring of truth that raised goosebumps on Sherlock's skin. A John that could smite. Sherlock moved his half-raised arms a fraction to test the waters, and lowered them the rest of the way to the cushion when John allowed it. The voice, the knife, the utter sneaky surprise thrill of it - clever John, who must have been planning this. John hadn't been pleased because of what he'd done earlier in the day, but was excited over what he was about to do. He hadn't been making tea, he'd just made the expected noises.

Bra-_vo_.

The edge of the blade scraped up Sherlock's neck toward his chin, then back down again to rest against his collarbone. John was breathing in his ear now, teasing out his tongue to flick at the lobe. His hold on Sherlock's chest relaxed since the knife held him adequately captive, and he used that hand to his advantage, running his palm over Sherlock; shoulder, pec, nipple, abdomen, using his nails to scrape a trail back towards Sherlock's neck. Sherlock's heart was pounding, and he knew John could feel it through the his t-shirt.

He was awash with a complicated cocktail of hormones. Human fear response and adrenaline, the anticipation of pain and punishment, an almost paternal pride in his _friend comrade colleague dominant blogger lover_, the sickly sweet creep of sexual desire flooding his brain with illogical want. Ocytocin. Chemical reactions fighting for primacy.

How was John so perfect?

He knew, logically, that John wouldn't hurt him (much), but for one glistening moment logic took a backseat to the visceral human need to do something. A fifth, relatively undocumented, response to acute stress, one that would need to be addressed, since the works of Gray and Bracha were obviously deficient. Freeze, flight, fight, forfeit- fuck.

Sherlock made a noise in the back of his throat, part gasp, part whimper, but he wasn't embarrassed, was never embarrassed by _truth_. John slid his hand up to Sherlock's mouth, two fingers rubbing over his bottom lip, then dipping in to feel the hot interior, feel his teeth, before they slid wet trails back over his lip and cheekbone, leaving a wet smear of saliva to cool in their wake.

The knife moved away a scant centimeter, enough to talk, but close enough to feel the ghost of the blade.

"What's your safeword?"

"The same as last week."

The knife tightened, no pain, but there was a sudden welling of moisture at his collar, then a slight sting.

Blood.

_Nicked him. _

Sherlock groaned at the way John clarified the vector of this encounter, had to restrain his hips, which wanted to buck at the air as if it could provide friction.

"Not joking, Sherlock. Safeword."

The not joking part was what made this so important, so amazing, but Sherlock couldn't not buck at John's strictures to find the limits of this voluntary cage. How far could he push John? How would John push back? It was a question of how, not would. And now bloodletting was on the table. John didn't promise what he wasn't able to deliver.

_Brilliant._

"Crucible."

John fingered the collar of the gray tee-shirt that had seen Sherlock through so many evenings as a druggie, the uniform of a psychotropic foot soldier.

"Are you married to this shirt?"

"What?" He realized a moment later what John had meant, but he was feeling slow, slow, off-kilter, already phasing into a different awareness, and John had barely touched him.

"Too late."

Sherlock had only a moment to process that before the knife kissed the collar, sawing at the thicker-knit ribbing and seam before it started to part the front like the slow glide of a boat's prow cutting through water, the newly-cut edge curling under. It seemed to take forever for the steel to meet the bottom stitch, which was parted with a quick flick of John's wrist. His free hand, cool and steady, came up to pull the shirt edges to the side, to stroke bare, pale skin and darker nipples that pulled tight under his palm. Wherever that hand touched the other was sure to follow, trailing the knife's point against skin, so soft it wasn't even leaving a visible mark.

Sherlock sucked in his stomach as the knife traveled to the indentation there, the slight tickle feeding the want that trailed in its wake. John took the opportunity to shift around to Sherlock's side and the easier access it provided. The knife hesitated only briefly over the drawstring of Sherlock's pajama bottoms, then John was pulling the knot away from the scattering of hair low on Sherlock's belly, working the knife into the fly and then up to sever the waist band. It happened within moments, and suddenly all of Sherlock's most vulnerable soft tissue - belly, testicles, hardening cock - was bared to John, the crazy war veteran with the huge knife and a wild look in his eyes.

It was ridiculously hot.

Sherlock was expecting John to approach him more aggressively, but he backed away instead.

"Remember. Don't move."

John slid along the length of the sofa, coming to a stop at Sherlock's bare feet before smiling in a way that promised predation. The tip of the knife rested at Sherlock's heel for a moment before climbing softly up the arch of his foot. It tickled. Lord, did it tickle, but he couldn't move without risking a cut to a tender area, a heavy bleed area. The steel didn't dwell on his arch though, it moved to his ankle, then to his inseam, catching the material before ripping up, oh god, ripping up towards the apex of his thighs, the blunt edge of the metal glancing against his leg as it made it's way towards perineum, scrotum.

No. Sherlock wasn't going to move at all. Not when he felt cold steel press against the sudden fullness of his bollocks, or when John grabbed the little remaining material and ripped it down Sherlock's legs to hang in tatters. John surged up and pressed against him, full length and clothed in denim, jumper, cotton duck coat that still retained a breath of cool outdoor air, a complete juxtaposition to Sherlock's immobile nudity, knife poised against one cheek as John smoothed the other with his hand, the solid weight of him soothing rather than stifling.

Odd.

"You are so good. So good. You're doing beautifully." From anyone else it would sound like the condescending tripe tops fed subs to keep them docile and willing.

Somehow, this was the part that hurt most. The moments when John was soft with his hands and warm with his praise. It created a tight feeling in Sherlock's stomach, and he almost flinched away when it happened, but he also felt warm and wanted in a way he hadn't experienced since he was [redact]. John eclipsed his natural recoil from such sentimental tripe like a comforting sun, and Sherlock wasn't even sure how.

Very, very odd.

Instead, he looked away, not able to look at John's face, the face he knew better than his own. Better than anyone's, even...

John kissed the edge of his mouth, ran his nose along the line of Sherlock's jaw until he could whisper directly into his ear.

"Do you remember the first time you smelled blood? Really smelled it? When there was enough of it that the scent got into everything, was everywhere?"

"Yes."

"You get used to it, it gets familiar, but you don't forget the smell."

Sherlock didn't think John needed an answer here, but he nodded anyway. The first time he had scented blood like that had been just after uni, when he'd utterly destroyed his raison d'être and hadn't found a new niche.

Rudderless. No direction. A shrine built of doubt and drugs.

He'd just come from a pub, stumbled across a recent suicide in a back alley, someone who had jumped from a high rise. It had been...the body had split along the seams like a rag doll. He would have deleted it if it hadn't been for what followed.

Despite his less than stellar opinion of the police, he'd called in his discovery and waited for a harried, handsome detective sergeant who was just going gray. To his surprise, the DS was polite, listened to what he had to say, and then asked him to clarify his conclusions. He'd sounded skeptical about Sherlock's insistence on suicide, a pregnant girlfriend, and too many anti-depressants, but he'd noted everything before letting Sherlock go.

Lestrade had called him back two days later to confirm everything that he'd said. Then he'd invited him out for coffee to pick that "odd fecking brain of yours".

It had worked out. Sherlock had found something to do, and Lestrade said he got more gray as a result. Sherlock insisted that correlation was not causation, and Lestrade told him to get bent.

"You'd think it would have been medical school, but when I was sixteen a car hit a lamppost near the shop me and my mates were coming out of." John's eyes were bright with a combination of the memory and his current position atop Sherlock. "I ran over to help, but the driver had taken the gearstick through a lung. Sucking chest wound. We tried to seal the suction with some cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, but it was too little, too late. My hands and knees were covered in blood. I should have been sick to my stomach, but I was just so excited, so full of adrenaline. Shaking. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before."

"Smell is the sense most closely tied to memory."

"So you understand?"

"The excitement? We are not...unalike."

"It's primal."

"Recapturing the past?"

"A feeling. So you understand why I'm going to cut you now. It won't be deep, but there will be blood. Are you okay with that?"

Sherlock took a shuddering breath, let his head fall back as he closed his eyes. "Please."

"That's the first time I've heard you say please."

"It's only the fourth time I've meant it."

John scooted back till he was straddling Sherlock's thighs. He took Sherlock's arms, limp and trusting in his grip, and manipulated him like a marionette, stretching them up, exposing soft white flesh from armpit to the inner wrist. Sherlock left them where John put them, obeying the implied order.

John was incomprehensible in this mood. His chest was a rapid flutter, eyes gleaming with something bright and electric as he looked at Sherlock spread out for him, hamstrung only by choice, an odalisque only for John. Sherlock could often predict John's behavior, his decisions, but never in a scene, never about something emotional. Where would John start? Resilient skin with fewer pain receptors - across the extensors, the pectorals? Areas that bled copiously - the ears, the throat?

John reached out his empty hand to run a finger from Sherlock's inner elbow down the ulnar nerve to his armpit.

The soft, the vulnerable, then.

The second bite of the knife was as surprising as the first. The tip touched his inner elbow, then whispered along the skin, blossoming a sodium sting and a small amount of blood, down, down. The line of red was hair-thin, and would heal in just a day or two. Not quite a paper cut, but not much more than that either. A light flex to his biceps, and Sherlock could feel the part of skin, the citrus tang of air hitting newly exposed dermal layers. John traced the knife down, alternating pressure so that the line down his forearm to his wrist was intermittent, fading to nothing before blooming once again in blood and nettle.

The shiver that crawled over Sherlock was completely involuntary, completely delicious.

Sherlock had visible blue veins, a ghost of color on his pale skin, and small moles sprinkled like a pinch of confetti. John was lightly tracing those veins, probably thinking about intravenous drug use _76% probability_, and medical jargon learned in anatomy _12%_. The knife came to a pause at Sherlock's inner wrist, the skin thin and translucent over prominent tendons. Sherlock had hit a tendon once before, when he'd just started shooting up and he was experimenting with technique. Muscle pops were uncomfortable and made him queasy, leaving him sore in his bicep, stomach, thighs, wherever he had injected, left ugly bruises. The inner arm was convenient and easy. The wrist - the wrist was a minefield. Too deep, too wrong, and the needle penetrated the tendon - agonizing pain. He'd never done it again. But John, John knew what he was doing, that much was obvious.

The knife flashed, this time a quick cut that he felt all the way to his groin, his toes, flash fire in his mind that made him cry out. A little deeper, straight across the wrist. The blood welled immediately, burgeoning in a thick line that reached the extent of it's surface tension before it broke and began to run down his arm, felt but not seen. He could imagine the red dark of oxidation against his skin, a contrast to the white and watercolor blue of it pumping so close to the surface, could see it in the way John looked at him now.

John stared at him, hungry and raptor fierce. His face, his eyes, his wrist. The wrist he grabbed in the other hand, squeezing the flesh to milk it, bringing his hand up, up, a parody of courtly love, placing a kiss to the palm, a chaste kiss to that wrist, right on the cut, painting his lips as red and wrong as a whore's.

Sherlock was positive he was clean, positive that John was clean, but the danger of it rocked him- made him want it more. Made Sherlock want to taste his own blood from John's lips, slippery iron salt and the taste of John. The chase. Pain and comfort and too much conflicting data to catalogue properly.

"Yes."

Everything after that was a haze of short sharp thrills of pain, John's lips, red. John's lips, pressed to his side, his chest, his collarbone, where thigh met torso. John's lips, meeting his own in sloppy relief - mouth, cheeks, face, sticky with a parody of mussed blowjob lipstick turning to terra cotta.

The primal smell of molten metal, the taste of fluid salts scenting the air.

John.

Everything eventually stopped after a decade, an age. Maybe only minutes, seconds. The merry-go-round slowed and stilled, coming to rest on a fixed point. John, _John_ - the only motion or feeling, the only color the red that he painted them with. The only sound, Sherlock's cries and John's praise. The only feeling - relief. Release.

And finally, John above him, clasping Sherlock's face in his hands, knife abandoned, red thumbs at the corners of his eyes turning pink as they diluted with gathering moisture.

"I've got you," John said.

"It's all right. I don't know why..."

"Stunning. You're stunning." John's voice was fervent. An apostle, a fanatic.

"Please."

"What do you need?"

"I don't know." Sherlock couldn't stop the way his eyes were leaking. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the film blocking his vision. "But I mean it this time as well."

John settled his weight on Sherlock, half to the side, and wrapped him up in his arms. "How about this? Is this good?" His voice was unsure, an about face from the man he had been just minutes ago.

"Perfect. It's perfect, John. It's..."

And the incongruous thing about it, the thing that jarred him, burned through every faulty resistor - was that it was.

There'd been the barest mention of the first murder/rape in the paper, but his informant at the Yard, _trusting-copper unlikely-crush both career and sexual in nature informant status half life six months already three months in, 75% probability_, had told him the basic facts of the case, enough to indicate that another was probably on the horizon.

Lestrade had come round that morning.

John had been in the kitchen making tea, humming along to Nixon and Mao singing their hopes for a better relationship while Sherlock ran a polishing cloth over the purfling and ribs of his violin. Sherlock normally hated it when people hummed along to music, felt it was the hallmark of a musical philistine, but John was beginning to appreciate the nuances of Sherlock's musical choices, and he wouldn't want to halt the progress he was making in John's surreptitious cultural education. And when John started singing 'gom-pei' with a laugh and a whoop, it could only bring a smile to his face.

"John Adams is rolling in his grave."

"I thought he was still alive?" John scratched his head. "Did the Oppenheimer one, yeah?" He put Sherlock's tea on the coffee table and retreated back to the kitchen, not even trying to hide his smug smile.

"In his grave because you put him there."

"Oh, shut it." John plopped into his chair with his own mug and a plate of toast that he shoved towards Sherlock. "Violin later, food now."

"I -"

"No argument. Eat. You didn't really lose any blood, but you're healing, and -"

"I was only going to say I wanted Marmite."

"Oh!"

There wasn't much talking after that, just the scrape of Marmite across the toast and tea cups clinking on the table while Mao derided Confucian philosophy through the medium of song.

John was in a glorious mood. Had been, for the past several weeks. Sherlock only saw the borderline traumatized soldier in small moments when he caught John looking at him unawares, islands of dark quiet in an otherwise cheerful facade. Months, even weeks ago, he would have said that there was little facade to John, little to hide behind, but he could see now where he had been wrong. Could see the way John looked at him over the rim of his cup, fascinated and confused, unsure and almost...

No.

Not quite.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock and John set down their cups, and Sherlock wolfed down the last of his toast in two bites as Lestrade came up the stairs a few days earlier than Sherlock had anticipated. Sherlock looked down at himself to check that the dressing gown and long-sleeved jumper covered the skinny red lines John had mapped on his body. He wasn't sure how open John wanted to be about their...relationship, but Sherlock would err on the side of caution.

Lestrade poked his head in the door, tapping a manila folder, raising an eyebrow in question. "You up for it?"

"The Williamson murder."

"And one last night, same M.O., Body found behind a bar, this time in Canary Wharf. Victim still unidentified."

"Give me the folder to look over on the way there."

"I can drive you."

"I'd prefer a taxi." Sherlock nodded to John, who was already dressed in a navy jumper and brown cords with thick whaling, _predates gun wound slightly large John still isn't up to original weight must work on that. _Lestrade was already out the door as Sherlock rushed to his room for a flurry of trousers, shirt, socks, jacket. He stopped in front of the living room mirror and fussed about his throat and the line of red there. The shirt looked stupid buttoned up to the top, but the other options were unacceptable.

"Why not wear a tie?"

"I never wear ties. I don't even own one."

"What, never?" John handed Sherlock his overcoat after shrugging on his own.

"What was my one big demand, John?"

"No bond - oh."

Sherlock looked at John with steady eyes and held that tableau for another moment before spinning round to hop down the steps, wondering what had motivated him to let John know.

Know what?

Know...

Sherlock knew his own mind backwards and forwards, its tangential vectors and leaps of logic, its rigid rationalism, the nature of things better kept locked away, but he'd become increasingly suspicious of his own motivations lately.

He didn't _need_ the cocaine. He didn't _need_ John. He'd thought that this thing between them would be a convenient release, an occasional release, just like the drugs, but he'd found himself looking forward to John. Anticipating...

...John.

It was supremely awkward.

It was supposed to be an inverse square relationship, the intensity decreasing with greater distance from the source. They were not in bed, _the sofa the floor the wall the tub the stairwell,_ ergo, the intensity of their interaction should be lessened. He had calculated the probabilities to a comfortable margin.

Apparently the mathematical models that worked for the fluid dynamics of sound didn't translate to the issue of John in any real or meaningful way.

Sherlock had left his scarf, but John had grabbed it in their rush out the door, and now he stood on the pavement and draped it over Sherlock's neck, unbuttoning Sherlock's top two buttons and tucking the ends of his scarf into the coat to hide the lines left by the knife, putting it in place with a final pat to Sherlock's chest.

Something inside Sherlock went hot and soft and _wrong_.

There was no logarithmic scale that could quantify these reactions.

It should not have meant anything. Not at all.

But in the quiet rarefaction of the cab he could barely think of the case.

John was, if not good with emotions, then much better than Sherlock was at dealing with them. John, in his simpering empathy, could read Sherlock's pensive mood now, in the quiet of the cab, and left it quiet to give Sherlock room to think.

Think about the case, instead of his personal quagmire.

Sherlock opened the folder to look at the crime photos, bypassing the waste of perfectly good tree pulp that made up the official reports. At least Anderson wasn't the technician this time.

A few good close-ups. Face, mutilated beyond recognition. By something sharp, but not a knife. A surgeon's scalpel? No, not quite. Larger. He would have liked a better view of her fingers, her jewelry. Legs parted grotesquely, underwear put back on after penetration, then the body posed. Stockings used to tie the hands behind her, cheap stockings, beige, not hers, shows premeditation. Could be from anywhere. Her hair...the hair, groomed after dumping.

He passed the folder to John. "What do you make of this?"

John took it but sent him a dubious look. "You'll only tell me I'm wrong."

Sherlock smiled. "Only if you're not correct."

John opened it to the photos, and Sherlock was pleased that John sniffed at the police report with as much contempt as Sherlock held.

"Uh. Young. Probably pretty. Attractive and kind of, I dunno. Arty."

"Yes."

"Dumped where?"

"Behind a wine bar in Spitalfields." Sherlock took out his phone to look up the locations of both bodies relative to other businesses.

"Killer has a type?"

"Is that a leap or a deduction?"

"Bit of both?"

"I believe so. I'll know more when we see the new scene." He sat back to close his eyes and think about the array of possibilities the new murder could present, but all he could think of was the mutilated face in the photo, and the lack of identity for the second victim. There was something there...

"Maybe the killer didn't want the body identified?"

"No. The hands are perfectly intact, except for the defensive wounds."

John went back to the first photo, a close-up of face and torso. He touched the glossy paper with a careful forefinger, as if the paper was as broken as the flesh.

"Rather sad, the not knowing." John's fingers flexed for a moment, an aborted move for his own collar, and the dog tags that rested beneath his jumper, ID in case he was KIA.

"I have identifying marks." Sherlock didn't know why he said it, but he closed his eyes again. Some things were easier to say when you didn't look.

"Everyone does." John sounded just as even as he had earlier, apparently used to Sherlock's tangential thought process.

"This is a dangerous life, and I didn't want to be John Doe, so I have marks. Special marks."

"What kind?"

"Invisible ink under the skin. Shave my head halfway up the back and it will fluoresce under a blacklight." He smiled and looked at his hands. "Statistical analysis gave me the most likely locations to be left intact after burning or mutilation, so the mark is duplicated in four other places. Mycroft and Lestrade know. Mummy knows."

"Statistical analysis made you tattoo yourself for easy identification." John was quiet for a moment. "Why tell me?"

"Because I..."

Why tell John? Because he trusts John, because he thinks John would be [redact]. Because he...

Why tell John?

"John -"

The cabbie pulled over and whatever Sherlock was going to say was lost. "Canada Square."

"Oh, look. It's the death of the party."

"Hello Sally. Wouldn't worry about that test you took this weekend. Most likely a false positive."

"I'm not pregnant, you freak."

"I wasn't talking about pregnancy."

Sherlock lifted the tape stretched between brick buildings for himself and John to duck under before rushing to the area where Lestrade and a few technicians were concentrated in the middle of the alley. Sherlock pulled two pairs of nitrile gloves from his pocket and handed one to John before skinning on his own.

"Can you clear them for a few minutes?"

"Malhotra will work with you. I'll have him pull them out, but you've only got a few minutes."

Sherlock was already circling the corpse. "That's all I need. Malhotra agrees with me about Anderson. Of course he'll work with _me_." He made quick work of the alley itself before kneeling down to the body. The cuts on the face were imprecise, and made with a scalpel-like tool. The jewelry. The hands. He took out his magnifier to get a closer look at her cuticles. Yes. Her hair, one strand plucked from the root and examined. Her underwear...ah.

"John, did death occur before or after the facial injuries?"

John knelt, taking Sherlock's magnifier from him to get a closer look at the skin. "Before. She's been cleaned up before she was dumped here, but there was still some bleeding occurring after that. The wound to the chest must have been a bit off - she didn't die immediately."

"He could take his time."

"This looks amateur. He dealt the killing blow and wiped her off, but didn't even realize that she was still alive. Everything is imprecise."

Sherlock turned to Lestrade. "The contents of her purse?"

"I've got a list. They've already processed it, but I have photos of it in situ."

"Give me the list, and a list of items in the other victim's purse as well."

"What are you looking for?"

Sherlock began to type into his phone. Businesses. Proprietors. Local events and societies. "I don't know yet."

"Anil! You have that list?"

But Sherlock was ignoring him already as the information scrolled down his phone. "The victim is an artist, very well off, so probably fairly successful, shouldn't be hard to find."

"How do you figure that?"

"Find your warrant card in a Christmas cracker, did you?"

"Sherlock."

"The clothes, the jewelry, the hands. Look at her hands! She's well-dressed if not a bit avant garde. Turn the jewelry over. Signed, one of a kind metalwork. You could trace her by that alone. Well groomed everywhere but her hands. Short nails, rough cuticles. Harsh pigment under the nail. She's been handling desiccants and chemicals. A sculptor then, plastics and wood would be my guess."

"Makes sense. Williamson was a gallery owner."

Sherlock sent a text and waited.

"Williamson was left behind a pub close to her gallery. The likelihood that this woman was left near her own haunts is..."

An artist's biography popped up on screen.

"Beryl Newhouse. Artist-in-Residence at the Copely."

Lestrade gave a start. "How can you tell? Hair's not even right."

Sherlock gave him a withering look. "The purse list?"

A sergeant handed the lists to Lestrade who handed them to Sherlock, who looked at the lists and raised his eyebrows. He gave them to John, who also noticed a certain discrepancy if his look of comprehension was anything to go by.

"Lestrade. Next time, call me for a real case or don't call at all. If I want to deal with lazy I'll have tea with my brother."

"I don't have time for your -"

"You have time to sit around and do nothing, apparently. Her hair wasn't right because the killer dyed it to match Williamson's. Look at her underwear, same as Williamson's. Exact. He bought them precisely for this purpose. He wasn't looking for a type, he made a type."

"Reliving his crime. "

"Yes. He'd have to be a big man, well-muscled. She's in the middle of a long alley, and unusually tall, dense muscle, heavy. He'd have to be able to carry her down here, and a dolly couldn't navigate past the rubbish at each end." Sherlock pointed to the row of bins at one end, and the crates at the other.

"Not very bright, most likely disturbed."

"A boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend?" Sherlock laughed and spun around to look at John. John, who smirked back. "Do you want to tell him?"

John flushed, but looked pleased. "She was a lesbian."

"They giving membership cards for that now?"

"Dental dams."

"I don't think I've ever seen one."

"Exactly. I'm a doctor and I see them almost never. Only one reason people use them - their partner has genital warts. They travel better than cling-film you see."

Somehow, Lestrade's face said disgusted and thoughtful at the same time. "But how do you know she was a lesbian?"

John shook his head at Lestrade. "Dental dams and no condoms?" John turned to Sherlock, looking for his approval, encomium.

Sherlock was obviously a bad influence on John.

And John had never looked so sexy, damn him. The last thing Sherlock needed was an erection at a crime scene. He normally didn't care what rumors flitted through the Yarders' empty little heads, but he drew the line at accusations of necrophilia.

So he ignored John, taking a sheaf of photos from the folder Lestrade had given him. He pointed to one facial close-up, then another. "Their faces were mutilated with different tools. The first weapon was something like a box cutter, larger wounds but a razor's profile. The second was an X-acto blade, smaller, common in a sculptor's studio so she was probably murdered there. These are weapons of opportunity, so the box cutter might indicate deliveries. See if Williamson's gallery and the Copely use the same service."

Sherlock scowled and gestured at everything with a windmilling hand. "That was three minutes' work. Possibly a record. And hardly worth my time." He shoved the rumpled folder at Lestrade's chest.

"That's a killer off the streets." Lestrade had on that fatherly chiding look that made Sherlock's lip curl up.

"You act like catching them is the important part."

"Isn't it?"

"I'm afraid I'm much more...process-oriented."

And Sherlock spun on his heel and walked off, disappointment bitter in his mouth, like coffee too long in the pot. There was a shout from behind him, but he ignored it, pushing past a still-fuming Sally and the tails of crime scene tape whipping around in the slight breeze.

He'd needed this, needed the distraction, the perfect tunnel vision clarity that only came with a case - or pain. Or coke.

He'd thought he would use John to distract him from a lack of cases - now he needed a case to distract himself from John.

Merde.

He'd walked away from the scene, leaving John to catch a cab. He needed distance and perspective to think. The flat was usually perfect for contemplation of a problem, but this time it housed...not a problem, but an aspect of his life that continually defied categorization.

He couldn't have the flat, so instead he'd have a walk. A poor trade.

This was his own fault. Any projections he'd made were unreliable, since John wasn't the independent variable Sherlock had planned for. John was supposed to hurt him when he wanted it and be suitably grateful for the opportunity. Sherlock had planned his own classical conditioning, but now it all went out the window since John had hijacked his ideal path and created his own technique for operant conditioning.

And John was truly _gifted_.

If Sherlock hadn't known any better, and he did, he'd have assumed that John was much more aware of his own ability to manipulate with the tools at his disposal. He was already seen as eminently trustworthy due to societal baby-face bias. Sherlock exploited his own attractiveness, but he himself had fallen into the trap of associating John with innocence and honesty. Teddy bears going round the garden.

What bollocks.

Sherlock reached a hand to his throat, to the tender lines of healing skin beneath his scarf, and frowned.

Sherlock had ditched him, again. Sherlock was there one moment, praising John with his words and eyes, berating Lestrade and looking mutinous about the lack of a puzzle, then he was gone, down the street and into a cab to god knows where. He left John to make his own way back by tube, because the cost of that many cabs in one day offended his middle class sense of rightness according to Sherlock.

He was surprised about the approbation, not the abandonment. Sherlock looking to him expecting the correct answer was a sweet boost to his ego, but the abandonment was very much status quo, even if the reason behind it was not. Sherlock had been pensive even before the case, but it was something that was making him…on anyone else John would have called it twitchy, but of course Sherlock didn't do anything as plebeian as twitch. Those long fingers of his wouldn't stay still, and Sherlock kept aborting their movement only to have them resume twisting and tapping. Sherlock was usually statue-solemn when he was thinking, and the aberrant behavior said something unique must be happening behind those cool eyes. It must have been something to do with him, because Sherlock hadn't stopped slanting him these long considering looks, some amused, some serious.

And now Sherlock had left, looking rather grim and lost, with no new mystery to keep him occupied. His mind must be worrying at something else, and John was pretty sure that that something was John.

Which did nothing for his confidence, even if he had been expecting it.

Expectation was not acceptance, and _damn it_, his inner monologue was beginning to sound like Sherlock.

He didn't think that Sherlock was reconsidering their relationship. They'd just gotten started, and surely he would want more data from an experiment than what he'd gleaned so far. But it was pretty obvious that whatever he was considering wasn't lightweight, either.

He hoped to god that Sherlock wasn't bothered by the knife play. He hadn't seemed bothered at the time. Well, he'd been bothered, but it was a good sort of…

John felt rather queasy at the thought. Could edge play taken a bit too far have made Sherlock start to question what was happening between them? Did he need to renegotiate? Had John been wrong?

Sherlock had been _amazing_. Was always amazing. Beautiful. John had never connected with anyone on the level that they connected, and adding something as primal as blood, sweat, semen, _pain_, that made it even more intimate.

Definitely not enough data. Not that it was very comforting to think about himself as just a unit of information. A thing, not a person. Not a mass of hope and insecurity and feelings with no security net to catch him because he'd gotten way too deep over a man who wanted to be a robot.

Bugger.

The day probably couldn't get any lower than _that _thought.

When John got back to the flat, alone, he was unsurprised to find Mycroft sitting in a chair, waiting, umbrella against one knee and a Blackberry in the other hand.

"Mycroft." He didn't trust Mycroft at all. Probably a side effect of Sherlock's mistrust coupled with a hefty dose of respect for the way Mycroft manipulated his innate patriotism. He knew Mycroft was doing it. He could see Mycroft doing it, and John still had to take the bait because it was for queen and country.

Mycroft slipped the phone into a pocket and gave him that quick bored once-over that the siblings shared. Deducing everything about him, no doubt. Well, deduce away. When one lived with Sherlock, one got used to having few secrets.

"Dr. Watson."

From the arctic tone of Mycroft's voice, make that no secrets. A hidden part of John cringed.

"What happened to calling me John?" Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. John sat in the chair opposite Mycroft and tried to look unconcerned. Upright military living was excellent for cultivating a poker face.

Mycroft gave him a long look, and didn't jump in with unnecessary words. But John was good with silence, had been even before meeting Sherlock and dealing with his hours of intense, concentrated quiet, as fierce as the hours of manic activity that could follow.

"Look, I know why you're here, so can we stop the cryptic study and get on with it? Consider me intimidated and start with the..." John trailed off and waved his hand.

Mycroft sighed in the same way that he sighed over Sherlock, and John considered that a win. Just as exasperating as Sherlock? He was moving up in the world.

"What do you know about Victor Trevor?"

Now that made John go still. He knew just enough outside of the name to make him want to know more, but - "Enough to know that it's none of our business unless Sherlock wants it to be." He wouldn't go behind Sherlock's back, even if he thought that Sherlock would have no such compunction if the situation were reversed. "Enough to know I'd like to punch him in the face."

"He told you?"

John could only smile at him, a wry, sad little thing. "I deduced it."

Mycroft scowled. Seeing Sherlock's expression on Mycroft was incongruous, and at the same time it drove home just how close they must have been at one point. It looked better on Sherlock. "Sherlock made it my business a long time ago. And he definitely made it your business, what? Two weeks ago?" Mycroft raised an eyebrow, and that looked better on Sherlock as well. If Mycroft's sneer fell flat Sherlock would have a hat trick.

"Three." John said it automatically, then mentally kicked himself. Stupid. So stupid! Sherlock had said that one of the best ways to get information from a subject was to make them correct you by being deliberately wrong, and here he had fallen into the same trap. He didn't know what Mycroft was angling for, but John had a feeling that it would not be to his benefit.

"Three weeks. Victor Trevor lasted six months, but they didn't have the previous relationship that you...enjoyed...with my brother."

"Sherlock is fine." He was almost positive.

"Fine means nothing!" Mycroft looked almost shocked at his own outburst, then schooled his face back under control. "I'm sure he's filled your head with all sorts of ideas about how I want to control him - "

John snorted. "Sherlock doesn't actually tell me much. But I'm not blind."

"Yet you don't see."

"You kidnapped me and tried to bribe me the first night we met. He's off the drugs and doing quite well. I'd think you'd be happy."

"For how long? Sherlock has a habit of replacing one dark thing with another. Victor. Drugs. Detection. _You_."

A cold feeling swept up John's spine like the hand of a corpse. "I don't like what you are implying."

"I'm not implying anything. Your relationship has taken a turn for the unhealthy. I approved of your friendship, doctor, but this is something quite different." He examined his dominant hand, long fingers like Sherlock's, slender and expensively manicured. "Interesting marks on my brother this morning."

"I don't know what you're talking about." He hated this, the judgment and accusation, an echo of something interred too deep in his own core to be expunged. His own appetites, so familiar, so likely to do more harm than good, and how was he to know, anyway? What if this was only reinforcing Sherlock's problems? John might only be an ineffectual plaster on a much bigger wound.

But there was another, greater what if…what if this was exactly what Sherlock needed?

"Our relationship is just getting started, we're both consenting, and it's better than doing bloody cocaine." Sherlock was a grown man who'd been taking care of himself for years. He was also a genius who could make his own decisions about the hows and whys of dealing with it. But Mycroft had shaken him, by knowing, by being here, and John hoped like hell that the shaking of confidence wasn't reflected in his voice. "It's none of your damn business."

"It is when I have to worry about the aftermath." Mycroft crossed his hands and his legs, managing to look like the most pedantic lemon-sucking toff ever. It was an uncharitable thought, but John wasn't feeling much charity at the moment. He wanted Mycroft gone, gone so he could think. "I did the cleanup after his last relationship. You and your...ilk...will come and go, but I'm immutable, so this is very much within my purview."

"That's not going to happen." John wouldn't let it happen. He was no Victor, and Sherlock was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Even if, when, this ended, it wouldn't be because of anything John had done. It wouldn't end with an explosion, but a whimper, because Sherlock wouldn't freak over a break-up that he'd initiated through boredom. It wouldn't end because John had damaged Sherlock in some way, mental or physical. John would call a halt himself before it got to that point.

And John'd be damned if they wouldn't remain friends.

"Because this is so different?"

John felt inexplicably hurt at the disbelief in Mycroft's voice. Hurt and anger. As if months of surveillance hadn't shown him who and what John was. He didn't trust Mycroft, but he'd rather liked him all the same. And he'd thought that Mycroft held him in some small affection too. "This_ is_ different."

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "Sherlock breaks his toys, or they break him. Victor - "

"Doesn't matter. I'm not a toy. I'm not Victor, he isn't the same Sherlock. And in case you missed it during our first interview, _Mycroft_, I'm not breakable."

"Quite right."

John and Mycroft looked up at the door, and Sherlock, who pulled off his gloves with an angry grimace before tossing them aside.

"Mycroft." He leaned against the door jamb, arms crossed defensively across his chest.

"I assure you that it is only concern for your wellbeing that has prompted this visit." Mycroft got the words out fast, as if heading off any question Sherlock might have posed, but the attempt was wasted.

"Get out of my flat."

"Not until-"

"I know what you are going to say. Consider it said and get out of my flat."

"Know everything that comes out of my mouth, hmm? How about this?" Mycroft smiled that humorless little lip pucker of his and managed to look both smug and uncomfortable. "Crucible."

John flinched.

Sherlock tightened his own lips, then nodded towards John without taking his eyes off his brother.

"Yes, John is different."

"How?"

"That's not how this works. I owe you nothing, no explanations, no justifications. You, however...you owe me _everything_."

"Sherlock…"

"I don't need to 'ease your mind', or whatever it is you'd like to label it. I don't need to do anything to help you sleep at night." Sherlock stalked across the room, yanking off his coat as he went, throwing it over the back of a chair. The scarf went with it, and the marks on his skin stood out, livid and accusatory in the tense well that yawned between them. "You forget that our similarities are surface only. You think you understand the workings of my mind, but you haven't been in my mind in any real way. This is beyond your comprehension but that doesn't mean it's a terrible thing. Your data is wrong."

He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, baring his forearms and completely unapologetic about the livid map of healing tissue he revealed. "Basic physics. You're no longer observing us, you're observing the effects of watching us." He snorted in derision. "You never could properly divorce yourself from a study." Sherlock stopped near the fireplace, spine drawn tense like a bow and fingers flexing like he was restraining the explosive force of a punch. "There's another difference between you and me, dear brother. There's no shame in what _I_ do." He canted his head toward John, catching his eye, and John knew that he meant it for him.

John never knew he could feel so buoyant in the middle of a domestic pile-up.

When Sherlock turned to look at Mycroft again, his face was grim.

"John's presence here is not up for debate, interference or barter." Sherlock picked up his violin, and the freshly rosined bow which he used as a pointer, stabbing the air to punctuate his words.

"You've ruined every good thing I've ever had. I don't need you to ruin this too."

"Sherlock, I..." Mycroft looked haggard, and John almost felt sorry for him, because he truly did believe that Mycroft worried about Sherlock constantly. He just didn't like the way that concern manifested.

A bleeding heart was bloody inconvenient sometimes.

But Sherlock turned his back on them, bringing the violin to his chin, and the bow up in the familiar bow hold. A statement. a dismissal.

"John is off the table. Leave him alone. Leave me alone."

"Or what?"

There was a pause, the quiet before Oppenheimer scorched the landscape, but when Sherlock finally spoke it was vicious. Rabid. "If he suffers because of you, in any capacity, I'll make sure Lestrade knows just how culpable you are in-"

"No. You would never dredge that up for something so petty." But Mycroft didn't sound confident.

"You think this is petty? Trivial?" His voice was quieter, but no less savage. "That this isn't important?" Sherlock dragged the bow against the strings like he'd shown John, E, A, D, G, fingers flexing against them before launching into a piece of music. It was something John recognized, something Sherlock played when he was melancholy. Bleak, hopeless, the grey mauve of heartbreak. Shubert's Death and the Maiden, the beginning of the second movement. He'd discussed it with Sherlock before when Sherlock waxed lyrical about chamber music.

He'd thought Sherlock was trying to shut them out, and he was, but there was some subtext that he was missing, some significance that completely passed him by, because the music began to fill the room, poignant and sad, and Mycroft tensed, hand clenched on the handle of his umbrella, face turned white and ghastly as it leeched of all color.

He hadn't known Mycroft had enough emotion to feel, let alone that deeply.

But then, John hadn't known that music could be a threat.

There was a heartbeat of agony – two, three – before Mycroft was able to get his expression reassembled into something other than horror, but he still stumbled as he stood, umbrella in his hand.

When Mycroft rushed away without a word John was no longer surprised. No longer could be surprised.

When the outer door clicked shut Sherlock ended his playing with a screech of the A string. He tossed the bow down so that it clattered across the table top, making John wince because he had an idea of how much the bow alone was worth. The violin was placed down with the same care Sherlock always used, safe from the vagaries of his mood.

Sherlock worshipped that violin.

"That neurotypical bastard!"

John expected Sherlock to do something, anything, because he could feel how spring-tight the man was, almost vibrating under compression, ready to escape and cry havoc.

But Sherlock just stood there, head bent forward over slender fingers, hands pressed palm to palm in a way that would have been angelic if the anger hadn't been a tangible visitor in the flat. No violence, no ranting or pouting. John knew he was thinking, but couldn't guess at what. He didn't think Sherlock was reconsidering this thing between them, especially not twice in a day. Mycroft, at least, had made sure that they'd cleave together through sheer bloody-mindedness even if everything else was burnt out to a cinder.

No. John wouldn't let that happen.

John was never one to err on the side of caution, so he went to Sherlock and placed a hand on his shoulder blade, resting, not gripping. The wing of bone was sharp under the skin, and the muscle surrounding it was strained thin, wires through a draw plate. Sherlock barely acknowledged him, only inclined his head to the side to nod at John, but it was enough.

"What he says makes no never mind to me." It was a lie and they both knew it, but it was one that Sherlock let by.

"I know. It's just his usual leitmotif anyway."

John wanted to ask Sherlock why he was so upset then, nosy Mycroft being business as usual, but the memory of the unspoken conversation between the brothers kept him from broaching the subject.

"John."

"I don't..."John still felt a small awkwardness over anything emotionally significant that featured an unsexed Sherlock, but he ploughed on anyway. "Do you…" John stopped himself. There was so much he wanted to ask Sherlock, but there were also so many subjects he didn't feel he could discuss.

"I don't want to end this."

Sherlock's admission was palliative, and John felt something that had become tight and hard in self-defense ease under the removal of stress. "Good. That's good."

"Yes." But Sherlock still sounded unsure.

"Was it. Yesterday was…was it too much?" John thought it had been as close as he could get to contentment, but maybe Sherlock had a different idea of what made for a good mesh. Emotions weren't 'John's area' either, and maybe he'd gone too deep into unexplored territory. Assumed too much.

"No. It's not that." Sherlock was vehement without raising his voice. "That was…good."

"Uh. Good. I guess." John felt awkward and out of his depth, tried not to shuffle around in embarrassment at being so caught out. He was supposed to be Sherlock's boyfriend and sometimes top, dominant, _whatever_. He should be able to fix things that required fixing. Give Sherlock what he needed, like he'd promised.

Hard to be a white knight when you didn't know what to slay.

"Can I do anything? Other than shoot him?"

"Humor to lighten the mood?"

"Thought I'd give it a try."

"Not now. No levity." Sherlock looked at John now, sizing him up for something. John just hoped he wasn't found wanting. "We originally agreed to scene only a few times a week, and never twice in a row."

"Yes."

"I would like to renegotiate for special circumstances."

John ran his fingers through his hair and over his face, trying to process that. "I don't know. Are you sure? This is probably just a reaction to Mycroft -"

"It is a reaction to Mycroft. But not the one you imagine. I'm not thumbing my nose at him. I don't want to think about any of this right now."

"Special circumstances?"

"Special circumstances."

"Alright. Okay. We can do this." John looked at him, convincing himself halfway. "But come here. Please." He waited for Sherlock to evaluate the request and make a decision before crossing the few feet between them to stand in front of John. Sherlock ducked a little bit to be a little more of a height with John and it was foolish-looking and endearing all at once, two qualities he never would have associated with Sherlock. It made him want to laugh, but laughter right now would be a bad thing, so he smiled instead. "Will you kiss me? I just need some convincing. None of that really left me in the mood."

Sherlock stared at him blankly for a moment, then ducked his head even more to press his lips against John's. This wasn't a scene kiss, but a boyfriend kiss. Soft lips met John's, soft breath. Soft, soft. Sherlock's tongue parted his lips and insinuated its way into John's mouth, lazy and unhurried, happy just to stroke and touch. John could feel Sherlock humming into the kiss, a warm vibration that traveled across his skin and made him shiver when the hairs at his nape stood at attention.

When the kiss ended John buried his head in the crook of Sherlock's neck, forehead against Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock brought his hands up to stroke John's arms, and John had to wonder just who was comforting who.

"If you don't want to do this, we don't have to." Sherlock's voice was low in his ear. Soft, soft.

"No. We can do this. If you need it, ask. I'll say no if I have to." John ran his hand down Sherlock's spine, turning that small reassuring connection into something a little more charged. "But I'm not saying no."

They didn't normally discuss what was going to happen. John usually set something up and Sherlock followed pretty happily. There was sometimes a post-scene dissection of what had worked best, but so far there hadn't been any tedious assembly of kink menus.

There was something to be said for surprise and spontaneity, but right now Sherlock needed specificity. "What do you want me to do?"

Sherlock didn't move, but when John stroked him his muscles uncoiled, leaving his shoulders a little less square. "Just that. I want you to touch me."

"Would've done that anyway." He was running his hand up and down, veering up to the nape of Sherlock's neck and the curls at the base of his skull that John never seemed to tire of. "Soft or hard? Pain or pleasure or both?"

"Pleasure. I need something other than this."

"Don't need a scene for that, but I think I can do it." John smoothed the hair away from Sherlock's neck and placed his lips there, feeling the soft skin and dry heat, inhaling the scent of expensive shampoo, witch hazel, static electricity. "Go to your room, strip. Lie down on the bed and spread your legs."

Sherlock inhaled. "Are you going to fuck me? You haven't..."

"We'll talk about it."

"That means -"

"We'll talk about it." He pushed Sherlock forward with a gentle hand. "I'll be there in a moment."

Sherlock went to his room, looking back only once, a flash of uncertainty that was quickly wiped away. John could have easily imagined it, because Sherlock was sometimes mistaken, but rarely uncertain.

But John didn't think he had.

John went to his room and shed his own clothes, wanting skin contact with Sherlock rather than the slight domination afforded by remaining mostly clothed. Anything to exploit that physical connection Sherlock so desperately needed right now, but could not ask for without some stupid trumped-up intellectual excuse to himself. Maybe one day Sherlock would be able to ask for emotional intimacy without cloaking it in a scene, but that day wasn't here yet.

He removed a few things from a bag he'd brought home from the surgery, and picked up a bottle of lubricant before hopping down the stairs two at a time. They'd been taking turns in each other's beds because they were both lazy about laundry.

John pushed the door open and...

...oh, hell.

Sherlock was stretched out on the crisp white cotton, the spread of his legs and the arch of his back obscene in the light from the small corner lamp. He'd arranged himself for maximum effect. His head pressed into the pillow, hair fanned around him like a halo, eyes slitted at John and the long line of his neck almost at its full extension. He sat back on one elbow, but the other hand was running down his own chest, lightly plucking at the nipple, diving down his sternum and playing over prominent ribs. Sherlock was spread wide, legs bent at the knees and feet flat on the mattress. His cock was already full, heavy against his own stomach. A come-fuck-me pose if ever John had seen one.

Sherlock had the prettiest cock he'd ever seen, built like him, long and lean, perfectly balanced and formed.

He wanted it in his mouth, badly. Wanted to fuck Sherlock badly, when it came down to it, shove into him hard and fast and rut away while Sherlock begged for it, take him to the brink again and again before pulling him off in concert. But it seemed too soon for that, too...something. He was missing something.

He didn't want to fuck Sherlock for the first time in order erase a ghost of a memory. He didn't want that first penetration to happen because of Mycroft-inspired spite.

The first time he was inside Sherlock, he didn't want it to be just a fuck. And that unsettled him more than anything else that had happened in the last 24 hours.

John tossed his handful onto the bed and watched Sherlock's eyes widen out of the calculated seduction he'd been using. A surprised Sherlock, perhaps. A turned on Sherlock, definitely. His lips parted on an oh of pleasure and his eyes lit up like serial murder and suicide. He craned forward to get a better look, but John pushed him back down with a firm hand.

"Lie back completely."

Mycroft would regret what he'd tried, Sherlock would make sure of it. He didn't know what would come of this, but it was Sherlock who had the final say in what would or would not be. Not Mycroft. Not even John.

[redact.]

Mycroft had never cared for Sherlock, and this was just another way to exert control over a facet of his life. Mycroft wallowed in self-important, narcissistic, bourgeois guilt and yanking Sherlock around by his (few) weak areas was considered adequate sop to his vestigial conscience. A woe-is-me masturbation of his failings because it was obviously Mycroft's fault that his younger brother turned out like this, it couldn't possibly be that the little brother was just naturally gifted when it came to trouble, even before.

[redact.]

The fat bastard. It never mattered how much weight he lost or gained, because sometimes fat was on the inside, like a festering sore that would not be expunged. A permanent abscess.

And Sherlock would remind him of that at every opportunity.

[redact.]

The fat arse.

[redact.]

The manipulative queen.

[redact.]

The bloody _murderer_.

[redact.]

[redact.]

[redact.]

[redact.]

[REDACT.]

Sherlock felt violence humming just beneath the surface of his skin, but there was no outlet. He couldn't spar with John. Krav Maga was designed to kill your opponent by any means, not take out anger on your flatmate/lover. The dojo was too far away to cut the immediate edge off.

He needed...

He needed.

"John."

He closed his eyes when John placed a hand on him, touching him in a way he hadn't appreciated until recently. He wanted that touch, wanted it. Anger transmuting into anticipatory lust in perfect alchemy, John acting as catalyst. _Newton was an alchemist and a scientist proving there was no mutual exclusivity so he could have this without losing himself too. There was precedent._

He'd had to justify too much to himself lately, but right now, asking John to do this with him was necessary. And he knew John would do it, he was a natural born rule breaker - even his own rules.

Sherlock could force it, turn on what charm he was capable of, touch John back until his only option was to give in to the want Sherlock fed like a controlled blue flame. But, really, it was so much better if he just asked, so much better if John said yes and didn't need to be seduced into it at all.

John's hands and lips were warm against him where they moved, a wonder of soft friction that kindled a spark in under-appreciated nerve endings, a careful touch to his hair. His hair must fascinate John he touched it so much, and this, just this was what he wanted.

John, so easy. Asked and answered in barely a moment.

The sound of John's voice and the few glimpses Sherlock had snatched of his face when he had been speaking to Mycroft were perturbing. The voice and the profile spoke of a deep insecurity over what was between them, and of shame about wanting it.

Part of John wanted to be convinced that he, _this_, was bad.

Sherlock could prove him wrong, but he'd prefer it if John did the proving for him.

John's finger curled against his earlobe, barely there, and the reaction it engendered was out of proportion to the action itself so that Sherlock had to suppress a shiver. Hard or soft, pleasure or pain, it didn't matter as long as John was there.

All of John. On him, in him, as close as he could get because there was something wrong with Sherlock, something gruesome, the way he wanted to crawl inside John and wear him as a skin, borrow parts of John and keep them for himself, devour John and have his powers become Sherlock's own, with eyes, with teeth, with tongue - have John devour him in turn.

There was something very wrong here, but the thought of stopping it made the feeling of wrongness multiply exponentially.

He was not the Sherlock he had been six months ago, that much was certain. The pervasive wrongness he felt stemmed from the fact that he didn't seem to care.

That this - John touching him, John breathing heat and life into his ear, smelling of Sherlock's French soap and the powder from disposable nitrile gloves, John directing him like this, in all things sexual, sending him to his room - was normal function.

Optimal function, despite every previous theory he'd had on the subject.

Yet it was still not enough. It should inspire fear, the idea that he was so invested in this, and yet still not sated. It was gluttonous, when everything else that had come before had been the definition of ascetic. They'd been at this for several weeks, _three weeks four days eight scenes now nine; twenty-three sexual acts_, and John had not yet penetrated Sherlock, nor been penetrated by him.

Which was suddenly what Sherlock wanted more than anything in the world.

So he followed John's orders, stripped and spread himself. He'd give John everything he could, arch and writhe with as much deliberate allure as he could generate, body asking for John's fuck even more than his mouth had, invitation with no words.

John's reaction didn't disappoint. He walked into the room naked, compact muscles, sturdy frame, scarred, sandy, serious. When he saw Sherlock, undulation of the spine, deliberately narrowed eyes, canting of the hips, his own eyes narrowed.

Fierce and provocative as he tossed a few things to the bed.

Lubricant, silicone-based. A speculum, stainless steel and two-pronged - not the type used at the surgery. A knobby silicone vibrator smaller than a lipstick with a thin wand extension.

Sherlock couldn't stop the widening of his eyes, his mouth, or the soft intake of breath even as he bit his own lip to stall words he wasn't sure he should utter. He honestly didn't even know what he was going to say.

They'd masturbated one another, watched and been watched, done frottage, intercrural, oral sex in multiple configurations, but there hadn't been anything blatantly anal except for the shade of a finger along Sherlock's perineum that feathered away into nothing once it reached his arse during a particularly sloppy and enthusiastic blowjob from John.

The speculum practically testified to the fact that Sherlock was going to get fucked. The lack of a condom said that it might not be with John's cock.

And that would be...a waste.

He tried to sit up to get a better look at what John had brought, the toys, the nakedness of John that was still such a novelty and a pleasure, but he was stopped by a firm hand, that hard callused hand with its clever fingers, and an even firmer voice.

"Lie back completely."

"What -"

"Shh." John placed a finger to Sherlock's lips. "You don't need to anticipate what I'm doing to you."

"Lie back and think of England?"

"Mmm. No. Lie back..." John pushed Sherlock into the bedding, spreading his fingers against Sherlock's chest. "...and think of me."

Sherlock would have argued, but John chose that moment to pinch Sherlock's right nipple, thumb and forefinger biting down on the crinkling skin, twisting and pulling away only to do it again, and again. Soon the fingers were replaced by a wet mouth, breath chasing across the nub, humid air that quickly cooled on the skin, only to bloom into heat once more after John's lips closed around it for a firm suck.

The nipple play was nice, but Sherlock didn't catch fire until John clambered onto the bed to rest between Sherlock's legs, hands pushing Sherlock's knees open even wider. Then John shot forward, teeth to Sherlock's chest, nips and bites and licks, a mark high up on his neck where it would show. Small, perfect teeth that worried at a nipple, pulling it away from his body until it was just this close to unbearable, fire and wet, a little flick of tongue tip to swollen end, before letting go, letting blood rush back, bringing its own sweet agony.

John's hands kept him parted, John's height made sure that John's cock was nestled against his own, sliding in the precome that slicked their stomachs and the groove of Sherlock's thigh. He could smell their sex now, hot slick and sweat, scent of erect flesh. It was more powerful in the creases, those hidden places where the hair trapped the musk; armpit, groin, the back of Sherlock's neck where everything was oddly sensitive.

Strips of red from their earlier knife play were traced, first with hands, then with a tongue, a few of the deeper healing cuts catching against John's lips. John groaned, and Sherlock could imagine that small taste of rehydrating blood calling up memories of the previous encounter.

John's fingernails entered the fray, scratching their way across Sherlock's abdominal muscles and lower belly all the way to his thighs, creating a path to follow with his mouth.

Sherlock could only fling his head back and let it happen, breath coming shallow and fast, choking on a cry when John did something particularly clever. Sherlock had found that sex was usually a lie between two people, but this...this was truth in motion. There was no pretense here, no crippling rules or avoidance, and this scared him with the eerie perfection of it all, this hyperreality that had no demarcation between reality and fantasy because the fantasy had become fact.

Never had the truth bothered Sherlock. Except, perhaps, it had right now.

And maybe the truth here was not so infinite, because when he clenched his eyes shut on the pain, he was able to tell himself that it was because of John's teeth, leaving a mark.

There was a mouth at his thigh, his scrotum, the head of his cock, lipping, teasing, where he would prefer firm suction. There came the snap of rubber loud in the room, then gloved fingers smoothing cool jelly across his arse, a light touch, then a firm clinical push against the tight furl of his sphincter, at odds with the soft kisses John placed against his inner thigh. The finger breached, the muscle dilating with the need to have John in him now, right _now_, and he went in to the last knuckle, a dead on hit to the prostate, making Sherlock jump, shiver, gasp. "John."

A chuckle from John, dark and knowing. A doctor's knowledge of anatomy.

There was another pump of the lubricant, and then the finger was removed. It was a quick process, finger slipping out, cool greased metal taking its place and sliding in to the hilt, the wide flange at the base stopping the internal glide, so quick and smooth and cold, a surprise, a shiver-inducing conundrum because he wanted the slickness, the pressure, the movement against the gland, but the chill hardness made him contract around it with the need to expel the intrusion.

He couldn't contain the moan it produced, or the slightly panicked look in his eyes, he was sure. He looked at John for something, reassurance, perhaps, but whatever it was, he found it, in John's face, so intent on his own, in John's hands, rubbing at his lower belly, rubber catching on the fine hairs there.

"God, that's..."

"W-what?"

"...Brilliant." John looked down at the speculum entering Sherlock's body, and Sherlock wished that he could see what John was seeing, experience it as John was experiencing it, because the look on John's face was...

"I'm going to open you up now."

"Yes. Do it."

John's hands left his belly to adjust the mechanism on the speculum, and suddenly Sherlock could feel the bill-like flanges parting and exposing him, scissoring him open and screwing into place. The extensions had cut-aways to make most of his arse accessible, and there were parts of Sherlock that were suddenly feeling cool air for the very first time and it was...disconcerting. Odd. Vulnerable.

Exciting.

Yes.

John moved the speculum into the exact position he wanted it, and lost no time, taking another dollop of lube on two fingers and pressing it in to feel Sherlock's interior walls, rubbing, rubbing, twisting, being a bloody tease until -

"Argh!"

"Good, yes?" There was a bit of laughter and breathlessness in John's voice as he homed in on Sherlock's prostate, taking up a steady rubbing rhythm that made Sherlock's eyes roll back.

"Fuck." Sherlock bucked his hips, trying to get a bit more pressure, but John held him steady and didn't let him move.

"Just let it happen, okay. We have time."

Time? It wasn't a question of time. It was a matter of depth and pressure, length of stroke, and...and..."John!"

John just kept his touch light and even, a back and forth motion that didn't vary. Too soft to hit home, too regular in its movements. Sherlock tried to swivel his hips, screw himself into John, screw those impossible fingers right up and into his prostate, but John was suddenly a dense weight on Sherlock's hips, holding him tight to the bed, biting his hip in warning. And that stroking never modified or wavered.

The feeling was building, though, like mercury in a thermometer, a welling tension in his balls, his cock, a thrumming of the blood that wasn't going to lead directly to orgasm, but allowed a glimmer of it to appear on the horizon. His cock was hard and flushed, leaking from the tip, a steady trickle of fluid that wouldn't stop streaming. A thin line of pre ejaculate connected the head of his cock and his stomach, wobbling with every motion, but it didn't break. The sight was hypnotic.

"John! No!" He had an idea of what John was doing, and he didn't think he'd be able to handle it. Not like that. Not like this it was too little, not when he felt so close to actually..."No milking. Please, John. No milking. I want...I NEED to orgasm."

John didn't speed up at all, but he brought his unoccupied hand up to Sherlock's face, feeling at the light stubble, calming with his fingers just as much as his other fingers were striking sparks.

"Massaging, not milking. Don't worry, I'm not going to drain you. You'll get off on this."

"We." Sherlock was suddenly adamant. "We'll get off on this."

John's response was a non-committal hum, which didn't give Sherlock what he wanted. Sherlock felt like he'd been denied everything he wanted all day.

"Tell me you're going to fuck me. Tell me you - Agh!" John prodded Sherlock on the next thrust, a hard jolt into his prostate, a tuning fork to the spine, his shaft, a hard throb of _wantneednowfuck_ curling up low in his belly, waiting to fight its way out.

"My timetable." John didn't sound like he had enough air, and his eyelids had gotten heavy and hooded when Sherlock started thrashing in the sheets. "And you...you're still thinking too much."

"There's no such thing as -"

John cut him off, eating his breath, then his lips. It was a softer kiss at first, like the one Sherlock had given him in front of the fireplace, a sweet press of lips, PG Tips and Choccie Dodgers, that kept pace with the resumption of the slow and steady stroking that John had previously employed. It was meandering and wet, John's tongue sweeping through his mouth like a blind man might, cataloging features thoroughly, and paying special attention to the different textures involved, the rougher top of the tongue, the softer sides, slippery against their counterpart, the nobbled corrugation of the upper palate. John groaned into the kiss, more so than he had when Sherlock had stroked his cock.

The feeling of triumph, that he could make John sound like that, merely kissing and letting himself be touched, was overwhelming in a novel way, made Sherlock go lax under John's touch, all tension bleeding from his bones like the melting of glacial ice. John was happy. A happy John wouldn't try to change their successful dynamic, wouldn't go away for Sherlock's own bloody good. John was acting like he was gentling a horse, so Sherlock allowed himself to be gentled. Sherlock went soft and willing for John, soft like his tongue, and allowed John to stroke him however John cared to.

John made a murmur of accord as Sherlock relaxed under his hands, a small whimper of want, cock pressing for a moment against Sherlock's thigh to relieve a little pressure of his own."Yes. Exactly like that. It's good isn't it?"

"Good. Yes." Better than good. He felt like butter, melting under direct heat, slippery against John's probing fingers, the fingers inside him, the fingers of John's other hand tracing over where he was stretched around the speculum, puckered crepe skin pulled taut and sensitive.

John increased the pressure to his gland, added a bit more force to the thrust, and that was even better, and Sherlock couldn't help the whine that built in the back of his throat. It became a full on whimper when John ducked his head and Sherlock felt that moist tongue on the rim of his anus, probing the edge of the speculum, and the edge of Sherlock's control. John's tongue seemed impossibly flexible and agile against his straining flesh, and he wished that evolution had shifted the prostate a few centimeters south because he wanted John's tongue there, too.

There was a twisting movement, then a void as the speculum was withdrawn, but Sherlock didn't have time to mourn, because there were suddenly three fingers filling him, curling up to catch his prostate, shoving in hard and fast and spot on and it was his birthday and new years at once, fireworks behind his eyelids, like golden chrysanthemums, because the small vibrating wand was there too, next to the fingers, making everything pulse hummingbird fast.

"Can you take a fourth?"

Could he? It seemed like too much already, but too much had been amazing so far, and he wanted as much of John as possible, any way he could get it. "Y-yes."

He sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth when John's pinkie breached him, pulling taut skin even tighter, feeling even fuller than he had before. The burn was on the good side of painful, a burn he could feel in every extremity, but the pleasure never ceased to stoke higher, and the ache in his throbbing cock became more pronounced with the need to orgasm. His prostate felt battered and weary and good, and he'd probably be sore tomorrow, he welcomed the soreness, but he needed more to crest, to put himself above that threshold and find true release, not just of the body, but the mind as well.

And John moved up, licking Sherlock's cock along the way, settling above him, fingers planted deep, thrusting and curling in time with the rapid plucking rhythm of Sherlock's heart. John's eyes, butter rum and heat, stared into his own, intently. Sherlock wanted to close his eyes, or turn away, but he was caught, mesmerized, and he didn't even want to blink under the intensity of that stare, could only watch John's face, his panting breath, the pink flush that bled down his neck and even his chest.

"Sherlock." John's eyes closed for an exquisite moment, brow furrowed in pleasure so acute it had become pain, a look Sherlock supposed he wore as well. "Touch yourself. Make yourself come."

He'd been motionless for so long that he hesitated at first, until John clasped his own hand around Sherlock's, guiding it to Sherlock's aching hardness, and Sherlock started a quick, tight stroking, unable to slow down because he needed to come now, needed to come looking into John's eyes like this, feeling John's fingers move against his arse, his gland, a rapid tattoo that was going to break him, remake him.

"John." Sherlock's face screwed up, a ridiculous sex rictus he was sure, but it couldn't be helped. He was dimly aware of John's other hand wrapping around John's cock, moving against Sherlock's thigh as John masturbated himself. John was bent over him, naked chest pale against the twilight of the room, dog tags dangling to hit Sherlock's chest before John heaved over him, straightening up to look down on Sherlock, fingers still planted inside him, but the other hand was a rapid blur on his own member. John's cock was just like him, stocky and powerful, and Sherlock wanted to touch him too, suck him down , drink his come from the source, but this was good too, being able to see everything, being seen as well.

John was looking desperate, must have felt it, because his hands suddenly tightened everywhere, and he started to falter.

"Sherlock. Come." John groaned before he could go on. "Do it. Now."

It shouldn't have been that easy. Sherlock shouldn't have been that easy, but it was. He was. Everything contracted in the space of a heartbeat, compressing into an infinitely hot and dense dot before exploding outward in heat and light and chaos.

Sherlock wasn't sure that he had ever come with his eyes open before, but he did so now, unable to take his eyes off of John who was jittering into his own orgasm, panting as the rush took him too. His eyes were bright and rabid as they drank in Sherlock's finish, the come gushing over his fist, long fingers slackening as he grew sensitive. John made an anguished noise and clenched all over, muscles bunching before the tension rolled off with his orgasm. His own cock pulsed, and he aimed the ropes of come at Sherlock, striping Sherlock's cock, his hand, his neatly groomed pubic hair, the entrance to Sherlock's ass where John's fingers were still buried.

John removed his fingers and the vibrating bullet, but collapsed half on top of Sherlock, not that Sherlock minded.

He managed to turn his head in the direction of Sherlock, face half-hidden in the pillow so that Sherlock could only make out a cheeky raised eyebrow and the tail end of a smirk.

"Good, then?"

"Mmm."

"Feeling better?"

"Mmmm."

"Ah, pre-verbal. I'm doing something right I suppose."

Sherlock huffed and John moved closer until they were touching all along their lengths, sweaty and sticky and not caring a bit.

"Nice. That's...good to know. Sometimes I'm just guessing at what you need."

"I wouldn't worry if I were you. You seem to be a savant."

They lay together for a while, listening to calming heartbeats. Neither felt particularly tired. Sherlock felt rejuvenated, but he was hesitant to give up this moment with John.

"Thank you." Sherlock brought his arm around John and smoothed his dirty blond hair into something tidier than disarray.

"For what?"

"Putting up with him. Defending me. Not treating me as if I'm available for public consumption." Sherlock smiled, feeling lazy and lion-heavy. "Pick one."

"How much did you hear...before?"

"Most of it."

"I'm not Victor." John was earnest. Sherlock had always thought that earnestness was what happened when stupidity went to college, but John always proved the exception to his rules.

Sherlock squeezed his hand. "I know. You give too much. And he...he didn't have anything to give. Full stop."

"And you don't give away a thing." John's tone was off, humorous. Sarcasm?

"Of course not."

This time, John's snort of amusement was obvious, and Sherlock was getting to know the affectionate you're-an-idiot look a little too well. "You give away more than you think."

"How so?"

"Semantics." John turned his head on the pillow to look straight at Sherlock, smile fading. Opera seria instead of opera buffa. "You use words precisely. And you called yourself a sociopath."

"I thought we went over this."

"Different context. You called yourself a sociopath, when psychopath means exactly the same thing."

"Not completely." John was clever. And maybe Sherlock had been too transparent.

"Psychopathy is genetic, and sociopathy is -"

"Social."

"A reaction to childhood stimulus. Learned, taught, something like that. Which implies a bit more than you thought."

"John. I can't -"

"I'm not. I won't. But I want you to know." John touched his face, nose, eyelids, placed his fingers to Sherlock's lips, closer than a kiss. "If you need to..."

"I know."

They lay quietly for a moment, the only sounds their breathing, a steady drip from the tap and muffled evening street.

But Sherlock couldn't let things lie as they were. "Why?"

"Why what? Why this?" John gestured to the wrecked bed and their mutual nudity. "Or in a more existential sense?" John's lips quirked up at the corner.

"Why won't you fuck me?"

John frowned, but it was a thinking expression that Sherlock was very familiar with. "You asked me once, what I'd be thinking if I was facing certain death."

"Please God let me live."

"Yes. But I wasn't afraid of death."

"No? No. You wouldn't be."

"I was afraid of not fulfilling my purpose there. I thought there might be something wrong with me. You know, later, in the hospital, when my shoulder was healing and all I could do was think. Who isn't afraid of death? Who enjoys that kind of danger? It's a sign of psychosis."

"You aren't psychotic."

"I know. But I worried. And then suddenly one day I was afraid again, and I realized that I wasn't beyond fear. I'm still not afraid of death. I was prepared to die in the sand, I was prepared to die at the pool. I just...have different priorities."

"What is it? What made you fear?"

"I thought you were a genius?"

"Not at this sort of thing."

"It's you. Us. Whenever you decide that you don't want this anymore."

"You think I'll end it. So you try to keep your distance?"

John shook his head and wished, not for the first time, that Sherlock wasn't so bloody stupid about some things. "I can't be distant from you."

"But you tried."

"And failed. I'm failing now."

Sherlock threaded his fingers through John's and tried not to think about what it meant. "But I like the way you fail."

"Thanks."

"Sarcasm again?"

"Mmm. You're getting better at that."

"Wish I could say the same, but you're still an idiot." Sherlock said it with a smile, and John, true to habit, took no offence.

"How's that?"

"You're forgetting that obsessive compulsion is a part of Asperger's Syndrome."

Sherlock looked away from John, suddenly intent on the ceiling and the cracks he had already memorized in their entirety.

"Hard to forget. I live in the same flat as you."

"You know I don't give up my obsessions lightly." He felt John go still, but couldn't shake the feeling that this was too much laid bare.

"Or at all."

"Then you should know that I'm not going anywhere." Sherlock didn't stop himself from reaching out with their clasped hands, placing them on John's hip in an embarrassingly tentative fashion. He felt more exposed here, now, than when he had been naked and spread-eagle on top of the duvet. "This is just the anacrusis. We aren't even close to the denouement. Not unless..."

"Unless what?"

But Sherlock had had enough of the subject, and turned his head away, blinking. "I don't understand you, John. Not at all."

"I find that...completely inexplicable."

"So do I." Sherlock frowned, but it didn't feel very intense, post-sex. "It's very inconvenient. I had calculated all of the probabilities."

John, beyond all reason, looked unaccountably smug when he curled into Sherlock's side.

"'Salright." He placed a kiss on Sherlock's naked shoulder. "I'm very improbable."


	4. Chapter 4

"And in that hour,

The ceremony of innocence is drowned..."

Benjamin Britten - The Turn Of The Screw

Libretto - Myfanwy Piper

The Ceremony of Innocence

Things had been getting dreadfully dull. He'd give John's left testicle for a case.

There was the experiment with the fatty tissue in the crisper, but that wouldn't be ready for another week at the earliest.

John was an excellent distraction, but there was only so much sex two men over thirty could have before they had to tap out.

The morning air was thick, and the gentle rhythmic patter of rain against the flat's windows begged for musical accompaniment.

There was a piece for the Baroque violin he wanted to try, but he didn't feel like he could be still for long enough to devote to it the kind of single-mindedness it required. And...he wasn't feeling very Baroque right now. He often did. When he wasn't feeling modern. Or angry.

Not very Bach-like at the moment, no.

He tried on a few pieces for mood, but couldn't settle on any one thing. Maybe Vivaldi instead? A different feel of Baroque.

No. Too much emotional investment. His Winter would sound like a slight chill.

He took refuge in modernity instead.

And a break for toast.

Shostakovitch String Quartet number two. Triumphant A major sliding into an unsure waltz. This was his favorite of the 15 quartets, no matter that the eighth was so famous. The restatement of the theme, the pulsating end to the first overture and the start of the second part. The second. Yes! This is what fit his mood of the morning. Recitative and romance, pensive, austere, ambiguous sound, profoundly sincere violin monologue that kept time beautifully with the pattering of rain against the windows, a hazy dawn of a piece that lit the room with the same ambient light as the muted sun outside. It was exquisitely like the quiet spirituality of Beethoven's last quartets, distilled for a more contemporary audience.

Yes.

The morning filtered around him, muffled by the violin, but Sherlock was aware of all the important things. John was lolling on the sofa, something he rarely did but which often corresponded with a day off and this sort of weather. Mrs. Hudson was bustling around the room, probably making a hash of his carefully ordered chaos and tut-tutting at the more permanent messes.

There was a footstep on the stair. Dress shoes, but well-worn, quieted as Lestrade ascended two at a time.

A case. Suddenly the violin and Soviet composers could wait.

And Lestrade was bringing him something...interesting. Lestrade had slept, but only just. A call had come in and he'd dashed from his flat not bothering with his usual ablutions _or_ his morning coffee, which was more important to a copper anyway. Dimmock should have had this one considering the time of the call, but it was given to Lestrade, so it was one of a series he was already investigating. There weren't any interesting serials currently in the paper, and Sherlock's informant at the yard hadn't been forthcoming about it, _perhaps he'd already grown jaded about Sherlock's involvement maybe he wasn't in the know worth investigating might need a new friend in the force_, so it was something they'd kept a tight lid on.

Curiouser and curiouser.

He dressed quickly, but lingered in front of the mirror for a moment to make sure that there was nothing incriminating showing, no beard burn, no abrasions or suction marks. He was looking at his skin, but his mind was on Lestrade's claim that this case was a 'bad one.' It was a trite phrase that didn't really convey what Lestrade meant, but Sherlock was familiar enough with his jargon that he had an idea about what they would find.

Lestrade was a paternal man who didn't suffer this type of crime easily - most did not. The few that could probably did what Sherlock did - deletion. Through force of will, or perhaps drink.

Simple. Effective.

Sherlock splashed water on his face and looked at himself one last time. His face was clear. Familiar. Blank. Hard.

Simple. Effective.

He stalked out the door and down the stairs, calling for John and Lestrade to hurry.

….

John was stretching out on the sofa in a very Sherlockian position, hands behind his head as he listened to Sherlock play.

He'd got up late, twisted in the sheets that Sherlock never failed to turn into some sort of soft origami. Sherlock's legs had tangled with his, but Sherlock was face down on the edge of the bed, one arm trailing along the floor. Sherlock's spine seemed impossibly long, like some Romantic artist had added too many vertebrae, but his bum was round and firm, barely hidden by the creased cotton wrapped around it.

It was gorgeous and cozy warm. John was all shagged out, and he didn't feel much of a need to get up and accomplish anything so he lay there, softly rubbing Sherlock's back until the lure of tea and the need to void his bladder made rising a necessity.

He shrugged on Sherlock's blue dressing gown over his boxers and padded into the kitchen for a cuppa before slouching his way over to the sofa and melting into it with the firm conviction that he didn't need to do a damn thing today. Didn't even pick up the paper, though it was right there and Sherlock hadn't yet ruined the crossword by solving it in ink. There was a slight drizzle outside, the window sweating a little with the chill moisture, and days like this were meant to be spent lazing around inside, reading, or cuddling. Maybe work on his writing a little later. Things with no urgency to them.

It was a while before Sherlock zombied his way out of his room, rubbing his eyes and looking for a cup of tea himself. He'd pulled on some navy boxer briefs and a white button down that he hadn't bothered to button. The white of the shirt matched the white of the bunny slippers on his feet, a gift from John that had come about when he found out that Sherlock had never seen, or had deleted the memory of, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He'd rectified that grievous hole in Sherlock's 'cultural education' in much the same way Sherlock tried to remedy the holes in his, and he couldn't stifle the smile that emerged whenever he saw them on Sherlock's feet. They had little fangs on them.

John would have made him tea, but...fuck. That would require getting up.

Sherlock made tea and dry toast before grunting out a greeting, then doodled something on a notepad as he slumped over the kitchen table. He didn't perk up until his second cup of tea. John knew he had perked up because he crossed the room in those ridiculous slippers to grab his violin out of its case, taking it back to the kitchen chair.

John couldn't see what he was doing, but it was several minutes before he heard a careful pizzicato that gained momentum, then a pause while Sherlock fiddled with his bow.

When the music finally began John knew the piece. Sherlock had been practicing it on and off for the past several weeks. It was a recently composed Glass partita for solo violin. It started out like slowly poured treacle, then quickened into a more frantic pace without losing its sensuality.

He rather liked it. He'd have to record it so they could use it as a soundtrack for sex one day. Which was a good idea, a soundtrack for sex. Maybe he could get Sherlock to make a few of them, depending on the mood. The thought made John blush a bit, because _he was going to ask Sherlock for a mix tape _even though they were both grown men. He put his feet up on the arm of the sofa and let his head hang off the edge of the cushion so the pink in his cheeks could be blamed on increased blood flow to his face.

Mrs. Hudson came in a bit later, picking up as she went, quietly tutting, but John had figured out that she visited, and cleaned, more often when Sherlock was coaxing something gorgeous from his instrument.

John smiled. If Sherlock was playing he wasn't opening his mouth. They might be having sex, and John might be liking it, but John wasn't blind to any of Sherlock's numerous faults. The man still drove him round the twist sometimes.

The Glass faded into something indeterminate, then something that sounded crazily like Master of Puppets, then a line or two from a Shostakovitch string quartet - the second one, he thought. Sherlock was doodling on his violin, just as much as he had on the notepad earlier, not settling on any one thing until the Shostakovitch took flight. The morning was rare - lazy, domestic and silly looking, he was sure.

It was lovely.

And ruined completely when Lestrade let himself in looking grim and tired.

He closed the door behind him with a soft click before leaning against it. There were dark bags under his eyes, and the light patterning of crow's feet had deepened to match the crease in his forehead, aging him by at least five years.

Despite all that Lestrade grinned at the picture Sherlock made. John sat up to get a better look, and Sherlock was bolt upright in the dining chair, chest bare, shirttails askew, bunny-slippered feet canted out as he played.

With a last bite of toast sticking out of his mouth.

Sherlock merely raised an eyebrow and pulled his bow to an abrupt finish as he sucked in the last bit of crust.

"Don't." Sherlock's voice was firm, and only slightly distorted by the food he was chewing.

"Don't what?"

"Touch the camera phone and you're a dead man."

"Wish I had time to joke, but I need you on this one."

"Just let me get dressed." Sherlock popped up, wiping his instrument down with a hasty cloth before putting the violin in its case and rushing off.

"Sherlock..." Lestrade ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. "This is a _bad _one."

Sherlock paused on the way to his bedroom and nodded once, decisively, before closing the door behind him. John was just getting up to do the same, feeling a little thrill of anticipation himself, when he caught the little byplay. "Bad one?"

Lestrade sighed. "Yeah. None of us like it when it's kids. Not even Sherlock." Lestrade shook his head. "He doesn't say it, but he's always quieter, during. No baiting, won't take any bait."

"And this one?"

Lestrade looked at him. "Might want to stay home. It's about as bad as it gets."

John shook his head. "You know me better than that. And I doubt it's worse than Afghanistan."

"Yeah, I do know you. Know_ him_ better, too. That's why I have my car this time. No cruiser."

"Good. I'm sick of taxis."

"But as far as Afghanistan goes..."

John just raised an eyebrow over his last swallow of tepid tea.

"There's some things war doesn't prepare you for."

….

John looked out the window, pretending to be engrossed by the trip because speaking meant adding to the tension. The ride to the scene seemed to take forever, and there wasn't any data to keep Sherlock occupied. He wouldn't let Lestrade tell him about the murder either, unwilling to trust 'ham-handed speculation spoon-fed to him by dabblers'. They couldn't discuss the case, but neither could they think of anything else, so the only sounds on the long drive were Sherlock's irritated huffs and the strumming of his fingers against the plastic of the interior door.

John just shrugged and burrowed into his coat, trying to find the happy place he had inhabited earlier that morning.

He didn't succeed. There was too much anticipation running around his skull. If just the promise of adrenaline could do this to John, what did it do to Sherlock?

They finally pulled up to a mass of cars and lights surrounding the husk of an industrial site overlooking the Thames. Mycroft occasionally grabbed him and stole him away to industrial sites, but those were just unused, not completely defunct and decrepit. This one was five derelict stories of rectangular brick with narrow windows, and the facing of one wall was crumbling from the top down, revealing concrete slab and twists of rebar underneath. Bits of rubbish were spread like mulch and disposable plastic shopping bags were caught on smashed fencing and waving in the breeze like post-apocalyptic flowers.

On a day like today, with a foggy chill and the the odd drizzle of rain, the building cultivated an air of complete depression. It wasn't surprising that someone had used it as an impromptu crypt.

As sepulchres went, John hoped he rated better.

Sepulchre. That was a good word. Better remember that for the blog.

Sepulchre.

Sepulchre.

Sepulchretudinous.

Ha.

Sherlock would tell him he was being silly, but he'd say it with a tolerant smile. Much to his surprise John had turned into a bit of a writer because of the blog, and had taken to jotting down words he liked as they came to him. He'd always liked words, but now he had the idea that something could be made of _his_ words.

Something else he'd have to thank Sherlock for.

It wasn't raining at the moment, but the sky was heavy with it as they got out of Lestrade's silver Jetta. Sherlock's feet had hit the pavement before the car had come to a complete stop. John, used to Sherlock's lack of patience, was at his heels, almost jogging to keep up with his long stride.

The car was within the tape so they had neatly ducked a face-off with Sally, and John couldn't recognize most of the others that had gathered. A drawn-looking blond woman was propped up outside an access door that flanked a closed and dented bay door. Sherlock made a beeline for her, and she looked at Sherlock, and then to Lestrade who nodded in confirmation. She stepped back, allowing her weight to depress the push handle, backing into it to swing it wider for them.

John wasn't Sherlock level savvy, but he noticed the way she averted her eyes away from the interior.

She pointed to the left. "Past the support pillar and around the corner." She frowned and cleared her throat. "There's a smaller workroom."

Sherlock raced ahead so John called out a quick "Thanks!" before following him. Lestrade stayed with the woman at the door for a moment with a question about the property owner, but John had no ears for that. It wasn't immediate, and Sherlock's lack of interest told him it probably wasn't important anyway..

He'd taken out his pen light. The day was overcast enough, and the windows filthy enough that everything was cast in a late twilight. No lights were on, and the rusted hulks of old machinery, the winch chains dangling useless and noose-like from the ceiling, the musty smell he'd come to associate with the squatting homeless, it all made the scene look spooky in a way that screamed contrived. It was too book-perfect not to be. It was only missing windy rattling or the film noir sound of precise footsteps.

Sherlock seemed to think so too, because he slowed and panned his light around, catching the cobwebbed corners of the room and the heavy fall of dust on everyth- almost everything. John saw what Sherlock had seen, a clean swath of floor had been cut through the filth, a swath they were walking on like a grim red carpet, leading them to the viewing box for the opening act.

"Staged?" John had to stop himself from whispering, kowtowing to the ambiance left by a killer, but he dislike the way his voice ricocheted around the cavernous space.

"Like an opera."

…..

Sherlock swept past the sergeant on duty, _mid-thirties divorced single desperate for a child rather fancies Lestrade_, but he barely saw her because the facility had his attention. The facility that housed the crime was too good to be true. John had a stack of dramatic movies at home with budgets of millions that didn't have this kind of setting. It was a penny dreadful. A police procedural with expensive lighting and self-consciously chic cinematography.

And the wide swath of clean that cut through the gloom just cinched matters.

Sherlock hated instinct. Not the quicker-than-thought action that could save his life by telling him to _movemovemove_ at the right time, but _this_. There were no obvious clues that he could follow to tell him that this case was personal between Sherlock and the perpetrator. As he walked through the building taking in the defunct equipment, _die-making, machining, extrusion, blow molding, injection molding, bankruptcy over five years ago, parts cannibalized and the working machines sold, bank ownership, in never-ending court battle, ultimately unimportant and only significant because of its availability and probably its...ambiance_, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was all for him. There was nothing concrete for him to point at, but his sub-conscious brain must be filtering hundreds of different points of minutiae to come to the conclusion that Sherlock was meant to be here as a witness/participant/something. This was for _him_.

Sherlock deduced based on acute observation paired with statistical probability. He read copious amounts of raw numerical data, detailed studies, statistical analyses, and cataloged the information for later use. When he was deducing John's phone, Harry's alcoholism was the best guess because the other alternatives, an illness like Parkinson's _13.4 per 100,000 and only 4% occurring below age sixty, likelihood of John having sibling over sixty exceedingly small_, or plugging it in in the dark _3%, previous owner was not so welded to technology that they must have it with them to the last moment_, was a much smaller statistical likelihood than being inebriated, _10-20% of men, 3-10% of women though that is increasing/getting diagnosed more often_.

But there was nothing concrete and numerical that he could define at the moment that was leading him towards the conclusion that everything he saw was carefully stage set with him in mind. This was very much as he understood more plebian minds to work and he _Did Not Like It._ Clear cause and effect was superior in every way.

He'd have to ask John if everyone normal went round with this feeling of anticipatory dread all the time, or if it only manifested in special circumstances.

Might explain why Anderson was so craven and weasel-like.

But so would inbreeding and eating lead paint.

…..

John couldn't get over the feeling that something was off. It might be the crime scene, but he'd been to plenty and never felt this type of wrongness. Maybe it was the agitation that Sherlock was telegraphing. Maybe it was Lestrade's warning at the flat.

Lestrade caught up to them as they went round the corner, following the clean path. "Dust mop left outside the door we entered."

"I'll need samples."

"Not much to sample. They took the disposable dust head and the dust with it."

They reached a steel industrial double door and Lestrade irised his way in front of Sherlock to bar him for just a moment.

"Gloves. I need this by the book. It's..." Lestrade had a searching look on his face, trying to find the proper words. "We have to convict."

Sherlock rolled his eyes and snagged the blue rubber from his coat pocket, dangling them in front of Lestrade before pulling them on. "I always wear gloves."

"Better safe than-"

But Sherlock was already opening the door. John was pulling on his own vinyl gloves, so he didn't get the full effect of the reveal as they swung wide, but he looked up and his breath caught. Sherlock had taken only a few steps into the room before coming to a halt, and John could see why. It was...it was...

He'd seen quite a bit working with Sherlock. Crimes of passion/jealousy/money. He'd seen the work of madmen and serial killers. He'd seen bodies that had been tortured for secrets then thrown away like rubbish.

But this...

"Oh God." He didn't feel like he was going to vomit, but he felt sick to his stomach nonetheless. There were several technicians in the room, but they had retreated to the edges of the shop when they came in, looking at them uncertainly. Even Anderson looked grateful for any reason to take his eyes away from the lonely figure in the center of the concrete. Everyone looked away, looked at Sherlock.

Sherlock.

Sherlock stood there, stock still, which was odd because John always imagined him in motion at a crime scene, he vibrated with so much harnessed energy.

And then Sherlock made this _noise_.

It was a _terrible_ thing. As terrible as the assemblage in front of them. John had last heard that kind of agonized whimper from a five year old boy just outside Kandahar. He'd lost his entire family in a roadside bombing, the only survivor. They'd found him wrapped around his mother, half her head gone, lap a soup of viscera and blood. He'd made that sound, a keening low in the back of his throat, when John had separated him from the corpse.

He'd never have expected it from Sherlock.

Jesus.

_Jesus._

It still didn't prepare him for the way Sherlock's legs gave out beneath him.

…

Lestrade put himself in front of them for a moment, arm barring the door. He sighed before speaking, as if he knew that Sherlock would mock his statement of the obvious, but felt the need to do it anyway, which drove Sherlock _nuts_ because he knew procedure, had been following procedure, everything had already been swept by the techs, and Lestrade knew he knew all of that.

"I always wear gloves."

"Better safe than-"

Sherlock didn't stick around to hear the tired aphorism Lestrade had gotten from his doddering grandmother and pushed against the heavy steel door. The springs inside the press of the door ground as he shoved, rust and disuse making them squeal as it finally swung open, catching on a hidden stop once it reached an obtuse angle. He swept into the room, taking in the group of techs well away from the scene, the dimensions and layout of the space, the...

...the child in the center, eight or nine, face covered in a hood. It would be a burlap sack lined in cotton turned inside out...

Redact.

...the cord round the throat, hemp rope this time but sometimes variable- stockings, scarves, or a _tie_...

Redact.

...the criss-cross of binding, intricate and dense, technique more refined, the killer more knowledgeable, but still not enough to hold in the entrails...

Redact.

...the bare, dirty mattress, scavenged from somewhere, disgusting with all manner of bodily fluids, red staining to pink at the edges...

Re...re...

...the mutilated sex organs...

...the way she must have begged and screamed for hours...

...the brutal sodomy of a body too small to take it...

...so small...

...so...

And something new...

...a message writ large in blood, wreathed in swirls of scarlet, broad slashes of multitudinous seas incarnadine...

...a message for him.

O amnis, axis, caulis, collis, clunis, crinis, fascis, folks, bless ye the Lord.

It.

Britten.

It...

Sherlock would never properly remember what happened in the next few minutes. He only had vague impressions of the world spinning, reversing its polarity around him. The laws of gravity were suddenly repealed by a higher power. He remembered hitting the floor, rubbery and gelatinous, nothing working. He remembered staring, but not processing anything, for the first time in memory a complete blank. He remembered John's arms around him, John behind him, pulling him up, John's voice in his ear, Lestrade's voice overlapping it, voices blending together as others joined the chorus in concern, possibly amusement, possibly distaste for perceived weakness.

He remembered half walking, half being carried from the room, being pulled outside into the drizzle which should have shocked him out of his stupor, torpid brain reactivating, but only made that stupor cold and wet as he sank to the pavement and leaned into the support of a filthy wall. John was there, kneeling next to him, questioning, taking a pulse and other doctorly things. Sherlock looked up, looked up at the sky and rocked, rocked, clasped his knees and rocked, _shouldn't rock, nothing wrong with his cerebral cortex or basal ganglia, no, no. No stimming, no need to regulate his sensory input because nothing was computing anyway may never compute again_.

No.

And John was there with him, facing him on his knees and John shouldn't be on his knees for him - it was the other way around, didn't John know that? Sherlock wanted to ask, but John took Sherlock's face in his hands and smoothed away the water just like he had soothed away Sherlock's tears after a scene, and he was doing that in front of the Yard, kissing his temple and telling him it would be all right though that was obviously a lie because nothing would ever be all right.

Lestrade came and wrapped Sherlock up, and what was their obsession with blankets that they always covered him so? He had a stack of them at home. 

"John." Sherlock was going to ask him about the blanket. About shock. Tell him that in-hospital mortality was higher in patients with cardiogenic shock, 6.2% versus 63.6%, versus non-shock myocardial infarction patients. John would be interested in that. "John."

But once he said John's name he couldn't stop saying it. "John. John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn..."

"Shhh. I'm here. I'm here, Sherlock. I'm here."

John was holding him, blanket wrapped round them both, and John was rocking with him.

"John."

…

Sherlock didn't remember the ride home, either. He only recalled arriving at the curb and being manhandled onto the pavement, becoming enamoured with the play of light on a puddle of water that collected in the street. Lestrade was there, in his boring work-wear, calculated to be bland and inoffensive because in real life no one wanted their coppers handsome because handsome almost never equalled solid, honest and dependable in proletariat eyes. Lestrade must have driven, but all Sherlock could remember of him was wide, spooked eyes and concerned bleatings before he disappeared into nothing.

John was there. He was always there, but John was there in a way that no one else could be, because Sherlock wanted him there, elevated John above the rest, despite John's innate goodness, and his value judgements that forced Sherlock to be a better man because he couldn't bear to disappoint John. Perhaps it was because of John's natural leanings towards axiology that Sherlock trusted him so. With the work. With pain. With his submission. With other things Sherlock was hesitant to name because they left a deep ache in the center of his chest, like a shot center mass.

John tugged him up the stairs, into the flat, onto the sofa. John pressed tea, too hot, too much sugar, into Sherlock's hand. John sat there across from Sherlock, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight.

John waited.

Waited.

Patient man, John.

John waited as Sherlock stared at the tea, watching it cool, watching his breath disturb the surface tension of the liquid with each puff of air, a motion timed with every exhale, pushing against the cohesive force of liquid molecules.

"I can't help you if you don't tell me what the problem is."

"I thought the SOP was not to push."

"Are you saying you're standard?"

Sherlock tried for a wry smile to share the joke, but John wasn't joking, and when Sherlock went to put the tea mug down it was shaking. Sherlock stared at his own asthenic hand, pale gone to bone white and grim, a tremor that wouldn't cease.

"Lestrade will have it out of you tomorrow anyway."

He started thinking again. Didn't like it. He stood abruptly and removed his coat, tossing it to the side. He stared at John the entire time. John, who looked completely unfazed as Sherlock unbuttoned his cuffs and the front placket of his white dress shirt. Sherlock unfastened his belt with one hand while he grabbed John's arm, pulling him up and dragging him towards Sherlock's room. His trousers were already sagging round his hips as he made it to the bed, and they were quickly disposed of along with his pants and shoes.

Naked. Naked was good. Naked was freeing. Naked meant he wouldn't have to think. He palmed his own cock and groaned, anticipating what was about to happen.

"John." John John John John John. Sherlock sat on the bed, legs spread and leaning back on one elbow. He pulled John, still acquiescent, still all good, a study in insouciance, in between his thighs. "Please." This is what John is for. Reordering. Rebooting. Tabula rasa for the work.

He had John by the jumper, had John by the mouth, tongue diving deep, giving John what he liked, what he wanted, and John liked to kiss, yes? Slow and deep, and Sherlock was rather apathetic about kissing outside of a scene, but John loved it, and what John wanted, John got.

But John wasn't giving in to the kiss. He kept it soft - not quite chaste, but nothing that would embarrass him in a church. When Sherlock tried to pull him down, covering Sherlock like a blanket, John held fast, putting a hand on Sherlock's chest to put space between them.

"What do you want?" 

"I want you to stop looking at me and _do this_." John had knowing eyes, which was just a foolish flight of fancy, because what did John know anyway? John was just as obtuse as the rest of them, just as blind stumbling ignorant outside of his own bailiwick.

"But what do you want?"

Sherlock leaned in, kissing the side of John's throat, a pulse point, scent like gunpowder and witchhazel...licked. "I want you to hurt me." Yes. _Yes_. Sherlock spoke directly into John's ear, let his tongue trail the lobe, hitting all of John's carefully catalogued arousal points with lips and hands._ Lobe, pulse point, nape of neck, right inner elbow, torso just under the armpit, iliac crest._ "I want you to fuck me. And fuck me. And fuck me..."

"Sherlock..."

Sherlock grabbed at John again, this time throwing his weight behind it, and he quickly had John on the bed, under him, and Sherlock's hands were under John's blue jumper, Sherlock's mouth was travelling John's collarbone.

"You can do anything you want to me. Bruise me. Cut me. Whip me. Beat me - just fuck me and make it hurt. You've fantasized about it. Do it." Sherlock slotted their hips together, riding his cock into the groove of groin and thigh. "I want you to."

But John...froze underneath him.

"Crucible."

Sherlock tensed for a moment, hanging his head against John's neck, his hands on John tensing with him.

When John spoke again, his voice was hoarse. "Crucible. I'm not joking."

Sherlock jerked, then sat up, rolling off John and to his side, away from John. Not looking at John. He curled up, knees to chest, chin tucked in.

Sherlock couldn't stifle the whimper that escaped.

Bit not good. Bit not good. Bit not...

"No, it's okay. Really." John pressed against Sherlock's back, arm going round him. "I'm not angry."

"John."

"I know. But not like this."

"You keep saying that as if it means something. I need-"

"Not like this. We're better than that."

Sherlock laughed, and he could hear the thread of hysteria in his own voice; wondered at it. "Better." It sounded and tasted like bitter.

"You are, you know. Better than that. We can't just because you don't want to talk. You don't have to right now."

"I don't want to _think_." John tightened his hold when Sherlock began to rock forwards and backwards, pressed a dry, sexless kiss to Sherlock's shoulder.

Once the tears started to fall they refused to stop. But there was some comfort in the way that John cried with him.

…..

When John woke it was evening, and he had the slight headache he always had on the few occasions he'd gone to sleep crying. His face felt tight where the tears had dried and his eyes were puffy. He hadn't cried for himself when he'd been injured and returned home to nothing but a bedsit and despair, yet he could cry for Sherlock and not even know the reason why. He had no idea what had happened to Sherlock, but seeing Sherlock in that much emotional pain, when Sherlock had such a hard time conveying _any_ emotion...Sherlock's tears had inspired John's own. He didn't even find that sort of thing peculiar anymore.

He turned on his side, searching with his hand, but Sherlock was already gone, the bed cold where he had curled up into John.

John tugged off the shirt he'd slept in and pulled on one of Sherlock's few jumpers. He went to the toilet and splashed cold water on his face to make himself feel more human. He tried to avoid the mirror, but what he did catch was not reassuring. He hadn't looked this drawn since post-Afghanistan pre-Sherlock days.

He'd told himself before that he couldn't care too much, that this would break him if he did. He'd told himself that him and Sherlock was probably a temporary thing that he shouldn't read much into. Stinginess with the emotional investment, he'd cautioned.

He'd thought he'd found that balance.

What rubbish.

When John exited Sherlock's room he'd presumed he would find the flat empty. Instead, Sherlock and Mycroft were standing at polar ends of the room in a silent, icy detente. Sherlock was at the window tracing the hoarfrost with a long finger, wearing a John Cage t-shirt and a pair of plaid pajama pants. Mycroft was close to the front door, but when John entered he moved further into the room as if he was no longer unsure of his welcome.

"I brought the file."

"Current?" Sherlock raised his eyebrow, trying for normality, but the expression on his face gave away his fragility. "Or older?"

"Current." Mycroft frowned and looked down at the manila folder in his hand as if he was looking through it, making John realize that Sherlock was not the only one who was affected. "It has information on the two most recent victims. Ava Williamson and Olivia Smythe. Their families-"

"Don't." Sherlock whipped around, glaring. "I can't-"

And John was suddenly damned tired of the secrecy. "Will someone tell me what's going on?"

Mycroft and Sherlock looked at each other, sharing some silent conversation that ended when Sherlock tore his eyes away, looking angry. "You tell him."

Mycroft stuck his nose in the air. "Can't, or won't?"

"Don't start that again. That became old years ago."

"We don't have time for this. He could add another victim at any moment. Your inability to face-"

"Pfft!" Sherlock blew Mycroft a raspberry and stomped off, past John and into his room, slamming the door behind him. There was a quiet snick of a lock and then nothing.

John looked at Mycroft expecting him to leave, but Mycroft just sighed, then sank down into the nearest chair where he put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. It was the only time he'd ever seen Mycroft deliberately vulnerable, and if the Queen had taken a naked skinny-dip in the Thames John wouldn't have been more shocked. Mycroft ran his hands through his hair until it stood up like a gingerish halo, then looked up at John.

"I wish he hadn't done that."

"Still unhappy with me?"

Mycroft huffed. "That's the very least of our problems. Despite what my brother has implied, I'm neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. I don't know how much he's told you. I don't know where to start."

"Is this personal?"

"Is this- he hasn't told you anything at all?" Mycroft's look of surprise was an uncomfortable mimicry of Moriarty's surprise face.

The truth was that Sherlock was never forthcoming with anything personal unless asked a direct question. And John wasn't good at asking direct questions because he learned early on that Sherlock would _answer them_. Sometimes in hideously unnecessary detail. "You might say that."

Mycroft took off his suit coat, tossing it across the coffee table. He leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes, looking weary. Older. Sadder. "He didn't stay silent because he didn't want you to know, John." Mycroft shook his head. "He didn't say anything because he still hasn't faced it. It's been almost twenty years."

"Then you do it."

Mycroft nodded, but kept his eyes closed even as he brought his fingers together in the same posture John often saw Sherlock employ. Family trait, then.

"It is the same thing with the recent victims' families. He doesn't want to hear about them, not because he lacks empathy, but because he has too much." Mycroft sighed. "The lies we tell ourselves are the most revealing. Sherlock tells people that he doesn't care. What does that say about him?"

"I dunno. What does that say about you?"

Mycroft was Mr. Butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth and went on as if John hadn't spoken. "Sherlock is not very good at lying in the long term. Even to himself." Mycroft paused, thinking, and when he spoke again the question seemed random and tangential. Much like the Holmes brothers. "Do you enjoy Sherlock's violin?"

Stupid question. John had a soul after all. "He's an amazing violinist. He could be a professional." John couldn't help the pride that bled into his voice. It was always like that. He couldn't help but praise Sherlock's accomplishments. It was like they belonged to John, because Sherlock was John's.

Funny then, that it had started during that first meeting, as if John had already known who possessed whom.

"Sherlock's an _adequate_ violinist. He was an amazing singer, though." Mycroft's eyebrows twisted up for a moment before he smoothed them back into the zen mask he was trying to maintain. "Sherrinford was the violinist." 

John suddenly had an inkling of where this was going, a little churn of horror deep in his belly telling him what was what, but he had to ask all the same. "Sherrinford?"

"Our sister."

"Oh. Shit." John sat down hard. He had expected something bad, sinister even, but nothing of this caliber.

"Sherlock's twin sister."

"He's...how did he...he's so sensitive."

"He didn't. He imploded."

"Tell me."

"They were nine and a half. I was supposed to be watching them. But I was seventeen, and I wasn't born in a three piece suit. I was..."

"You were typical."

"As typical as a Holmes can be." Mycroft's mouth quirked up. "I was lucky. I got the brains from our father and our mother's social grace. Sherlock was much less functional as a boy. Obsessed with truth and numbers, morbid, oversensitized, sometimes violent, major problems with food. Stand-offish with almost everyone."

"And Sherrinford?"

"Despite being fraternal twins, they looked almost identical. She was much more like me, however."

"So not autistic."

"No. A prodigy, but much more aware of people and society. Still, Sherlock adored her. She was the only person he would really interact with. And she taught him how to mimic normal behavior."

John started at a sudden thought. "He blames you, doesn't he? That's what that was about."

"He blames a lot of people. Our father. The police." Mycroft leaned back in the chair with a powerful exhale. "But me most of all. I don't think you quite understand his obsession with lying. I'd taken responsibility for them, said I'd watch them."

"And yet..."

"And yet."

"When he plays the violin, you flinch."

Mycroft managed a glare, but it was half-hearted. "I don't go poking my fingers into your bullet wounds, do I?"

"Sorry."

"Then quit poking at mine." Mycroft nodded to Sherlock's violin case. "That's hers, you know. He took it up, after. He still sang...for a while. Bass-baritone. Sang Purcell beautifully. He could have had an amazing career. It was sudden - shocked everyone because he could have been another Bryn Terfel."

"He was that good?" Not that John doubted it. He couldn't imagine Sherlock not excelling at whatever he threw himself into. He could easily imagine that voice turning into song, deep and rich and just as abrasive and challenging as Sherlock himself.

"Incredible. Which is what makes his defection such a savage waste. With hindsight there were signs, but at the time it seemed an abrupt change. As much as he seems obsessed with crime now, he had been just as invested in music. He didn't have a plan B, so his self-destruction became much more apparent without school or a boyfriend to hide behind."

"How do you mean?"

"He was just about to finish his degree in physics and musical performance at RCM and Imperial College."

"I thought he was a chemist."

"Our father was a chemist, and Sherlock did read chemistry first. But he couldn't resist the combination of physics and opera." Mycroft smiled. "His performance of Look Through The Port is incomparable. And he was the best Cold Genius I've ever witnessed. When he left he was singing Balstrode in Peter Grimes. Are you familiar with Britten?"

"A Midsummer Night's Dream, right?" His opera knowledge had increased greatly during his tenure at 221B, but it was still patchy.

"Yes, but I meant in a more general sense."

"Not really, no. I did clarinet- lots of Brahms and Mozart."

"Then I think you have an appointment with itunes, tonight. It would deepen your understanding of Sherlock if you examined Britten's entire oeuvre. It shows where he was at when he chucked it all away." Mycroft sounded bitter for a moment. "He liked baroque opera, but later on he became fascinated by modern, atonal, dissonant work. It seemed to unhealthily mirror his personal life."

"Victor Trevor?"

"Yes." Mycroft drummed his fingers together for a moment and frowned. "When he began to wean himself from it and became interested in the works of Britten, I thought it was his university's influence, that he had turned a corner. I was happy for him- at first. That was before I came to realize what it meant."

"Which was?"

"Britten wrote about unique, excluded or misunderstood individuals- his favorite theme was a loss of innocence."

"That fits."

"Sherlock tried to remove himself emotionally and he began to embrace Britten because of his themes. You should have seen him in that last production. There's a line that I remember, burned into my brain because of the way he delivered it." Mycroft paused to take an audible breath before adding, "When horror breaks one heart, all hearts are broken."

"Profound." And sad. And truer for it.

"I think I knew then, that he was going to toss it all away." Mycroft had a far away look on his face, and John couldn't get over how human he looked in that moment. "All hearts are broken. It's a good summation of the past two and a half decades."

"I'm sorry." And he was. It was obvious that Sherrinford's death was the catalyst for Sherlock's downward spiral. It explained so much - the drugs, the misanthropy, the aversion towards caring for anything and everything not within his own head. He didn't just claim sociopathy. He hoped for it, wanted it, like it would make everything alright. Sherlock, the very genesis of fake it till you make it.

"Playing Balstrode, but so hungry when he looked at Grimes. I could see how much he wanted that for himself. Act II, Scene II, Grimes wanting a normal life but too damaged to grasp it."

"That's hard for me to imagine. He seems so confident."

"Oh, he is. That's no act. But emotion was haunting him so he did what very few people are capable of. He excised it."

"Instead of dealing with it."

"In the process he didn't just remove emotion, he removed his _voice_."

"Christ. He deleted it, didn't he?"

"He tried. He's tried to delete a lot of things. He stopped singing, however. I haven't heard him sing in more than a decade."

"He shows emotion."

"To you, perhaps. Britten once said that he portrayed the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual. And Sherlock is quite the vicious individual."

"Don't talk about him like that when he isn't here." John hated this, the fact that so many people made judgements about Sherlock's mental and emotional health when they never had the true picture of the man. Even his own brother, the brother that seemed colder, harder and more remote than Sherlock had ever appeared. "You say you know him, but I don't think you do. Not anymore."

"I don't know what you mean. He _is_ listening."

"You're so sure..."

Mycroft raised his voice slightly. "He can't declaim in the lower octave of his range."

The door muffled his voice, but Sherlock's exclamation of "filthy liar," was perfectly coherent.

"Prove it."

"Get out."

"Wishy-washy an octave below middle C."

"You own a Kenny G album."

"You liked Metal Machine Music. And I do _not_."

John cut in to the childish debate. "As fascinating as these revelations are, why are you telling me everything? I appreciate it and I'm honored that you shared something so personal, but this isn't like you. You keep things close, no matter what." John pointed at the folder that Mycroft had placed on the table next to his jacket.

Mycroft pinched the bridge of his nose. "Because they are related and the choice to keep silent has been taken away from me; because the killer wrote something profoundly disturbing."

John reached for the file, flipping through it till he reached a photo of the bloody words and the mad strokes around it. "The notes here say that it has religious overtones, probably cult related."

"As much as I hate to agree with my brother's assessment of people in general, they really aren't the sharpest tools employed by the government."

John raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to explain.

"O amnis, axis, caulis, collis, clunis, crinis, fascis, folks, bless ye the Lord."

"A prayer?"

"A vintage Latin lesson recitation. One with pederast overtones."

"Not surprising. It doesn't exclude the idea of a cult, though."

"It's also a line from Britten's The Turn of the Screw."

"Oh." John thought about it for a moment, all of the ramifications becoming apparent, and his stomach pitched off a cliff. "_Oh_."

"Exactly." Mycroft looked tired, but determined. "He knows who Sherlock is. He knows who Sherlock was."

Not just knew, but knew him to the core. "And he's killing other girls as a what...taunt?"

Mycroft inclined his head. "Just like he killed Sherrinford."

…..

Sherlock put his hand on the doorknob, but it took an act of will to turn it and face reality. He didn't even think to exit his room until Mycroft had left, ostensibly to oversee some avenue of research, more likely because he wanted Sherlock to emerge and interact with someone, even if it was John. Mycroft might not approve of John's relationship with him, but John was all Sherlock had at the moment.

This was intolerable.

He knew he needed to figure out how to work on this case without devolution into emotional chaos. Without some measure of distance he could not function properly. He wasn't seeing the criminal or the crime. He was seeing the victims. Molly, Niamh, Charlotte, Ava, Olivia. He was seeing Sherrinford. And to a lesser extent he was seeing himself.

He couldn't _think_.

He needed...he needed...distance. Order. Tea. A touch. Quiet. A respite from Pain. Cocaine. John.

He closed his eyes, trying to find the rationalism that defined his life. This was no longer the work. It was personal. And even _when_ they caught the man responsible, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best. The most hollow kind of triumph. He wouldn't be crowing his brilliance, he would be mourning the loss of something infinitely brighter.

It was a trial when it had always been a joy. Did the killer know that he was ruining this as thoroughly as he had ruined almost everything else Sherlock had held dear? Was that his goal? Did he destroy two more families just to hurt Sherlock, or was Sherlock's deconstructed state merely a bonus?

Sherlock opened the door, but taking a step into the hall was a harder thing. John was looking at him, and for the first time in recent memory Sherlock couldn't meet someone's eyes. John. John, who was infinitely bright as well.

"Come here." John was sitting on the sofa. His voice was moderate and thankfully normal; Sherlock wasn't sure what he would do if John decided to coddle him. "Please."

He felt like going back to the safety of his bedroom, but his feet betrayed him by moving forward anyway, until he was standing in front of John.

"C'mon." John tugged his arm, pulling Sherlock into the seat next to him, then prodding Sherlock into laying down, his head in John's lap. They'd sat like this before, so it was familiar instead of the babying he'd feared. Sherlock closed his eyes and didn't even fuss when John began rubbing his head. John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.

When John finally spoke, it wasn't quite what Sherlock was expecting. "So. Opera."

Sherlock startled, then laughed despite the lack of humor. "Oh, do shut up."

John just twisted a lock of Sherlock's hair into a corkscrew. "It's just that I always pictured you as a tiny detective, not a petite Pavarotti."

"This is why I didn't tell you. Endless snarking." Sherlock sniffed, because that should be obvious.

"That's not what Mycroft said."

"Ham-fisted segue. And what does Mycroft know anyway?" Less than nothing. Mycroft, who prided himself on being the 'normal' one, led a life completely devoid of any richness or happiness.

John stilled his hand but didn't pull it away, cupping Sherlock's skull in its strong cradle. "I only know what he told me."

"I don't talk about it."

"Never?"

"Ever, more like." Therapy was the answer, in theory, but in actual practice there was most likely no therapist alive that could deal with Sherlock or the issues that needed addressing. Idiots, all.

"But you don't have that luxury anymore."

"I know." Sherlock turned to his side, pressing his face into John's stomach. "I know." _John._

"So why don't you start with me?"

If he were going to tell anyone the secret workings of his innermost mind, the things he kept quiet, hidden, wrapped up in cotton wool and sealed away in a nameless box, the emotions kept under heavy seal, the gravity of them pulling him in no matter how much he tried to delete, it would be John.

It had to be John. He couldn't see himself having this conversation with Lestrade, or even Mrs. Hudson.

"He lied, you know."

"Mycroft?"

"And not just about watching us." Sherlock took a steadying breath. "He lied just now. He always lies. Leaving us vulnerable so he could get fucked isn't the only reason for the divide between us."

"I'm sorry."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Don't turn boring on me now."

"Empathy, not pity."

"There's a difference?"

"Don't be a twat."

"Which brings us back 'round to Mycroft. Father liked him more."

"Is that it? The great sibling rivalry secret?"

"Maybe I should rephrase. My father, the celebrated chemist, the man I adored and tried to emulate above all others, couldn't stand the sight of me because I looked too much like his dear, dead baby girl. Happy?"

John sucked in air, and Sherlock could feel the muscles in his abdomen tense against his cheek. "No."

"Mummy was fragile on her best days, and completely unable to cope with any level of grief, let alone the death of a child."

"So you were left alone."

Sherlock snorted. "I wish. I was left to Mycroft, who tried to _make everything up to me_. It was wretched."

"You got away as soon as you could."

Sherlock turned to look up at John. "Wouldn't you? If I stayed at home I was a victim. At uni I could make myself into someone who wasn't defined by...things I no longer possessed." A sister. A heart. There were other people tonight who must have had the same dessicated reaction to a fresh wound, but his inclusion in a widening club brought no comfort.

John touched Sherlock's face with a fingertip, tracing his cheekbone, tickling the edge of his eyelashes enough to make him blink. "Will you tell me?"

Sherlock stared straight up at the ceiling. "We were outside. In a field. Near the road."

"Surrey?"

"The most repellingly quotidian, _boring_ bit of Britain. I had to make my own fun, and I had an overwhelming interest in insects at the time. Especially bees." John had seen the plethora of books Sherlock had on the subject, had even looked over them himself. Sammataro and Avitabile's Beekeeper's Handbook and Root's ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture had interested him most. As did Sherlock's carefully pinned and framed specimens. Sherlock had heard, as a child, that Einstein had said when the bees died humanity had only two years to live. Utter rot, and not just due to the false attribution, but there had been a grain of truth that had fascinated him, and still fascinated him to this day. Besides, bees were common in Surrey. Grand opera and challenging murders were not. "I had only turned away for a moment. I was..." Researching. Experimenting. Cataloguing. "...playing."

"Someone took her."

"It happened quickly. I turned around and she was gone. She'd been near the hedge that flanked the road. There was the slam of a door, the boot most likely, and all I saw was the back end of a beige Vauxhall Cavalier saloon car. One of the most common cars at the time. No plates. Nothing to deduce about it. As bland and informative as rice pudding." Sherlock's Adam's apple seemed to grow two sizes too large.

John, who felt for people he didn't know on the very best of days, looked stricken. He looked like he was trying to find words, but Sherlock had heard every variation on the theme of sorrow and loss, and didn't want to hear the same from John. "She was missing for a week and a half."

"The...the same?"

"Similar. The same killer, certainly. My parents thought I was going to go insane, but all I knew was that I could not function without her." An understatement. He didn't know how to convey the horror of that time. The waiting. The hoping. Then the hopelessness when she had been found. Discarded like she had been nothing instead of everything. Just thinking about it made his brain want to eat itself like the world serpent. If he couldn't think about it he couldn't feel it. "They didn't want to tell me the details."

"I can imagine."

"So I snuck in to the police station."

"What?"

Sherlock didn't know why John persisted in cultivating an air of surprise. "I'm a very good actor when I wish to be. Even then." He'd wandered in, teary-eyed with some blubbery, trumped up tale of a missing dog. Pulling the heartstrings of the feeble-minded officers manning the front. "It was surprisingly easy for a small boy to sneak in to homicide." 

John snorted.

"I wish that I hadn't." Sherlock tilted his head towards the file that still sat on the table. "It was almost the same. A little less elaborate. There had been three other murders in a similar vein. The tool used for strangulation was different, but the rope to bind them was exact. As was the cutting tool he used to..." Sherlock stopped, feeling lost, running his hand over his throat.

"She was strangled with a tie, wasn't she?"

"Yes."

"And they found...nothing?"

"Not a trace." Sherlock pursed his mouth. "They found me screaming in front of the board of photos, and someone recognized me. Took me home in a cruiser- took pity on me. But they made it very clear that I wasn't wanted." He scowled. "That was my first introduction to the idiocy of the police. Carl Powers was the second."

"But you looked into it later."

It was Sherlock's turn to snort. "Of course. But they were right for once. Not a trace. An intelligent monster."

"Then why are you so surprised that this has happened again?"

"Because she was the last. The killings stopped and the conclusion was that the murderer had either died, moved, or was incarcerated for an unrelated crime."

"That was what? 1986? '87?"

"Yes."

"And this new one, this was the second one that Lestrade had been called in on?"

Sherlock and John both looked at each other, each coming to the same realization. Sherlock sat up suddenly, grabbing John by his ears and pulling him so close he could feel John's breath. "How is it that Lestrade somehow missed the fact that a similar string of killings happened a quarter of a century ago?"

"He...didn't?"

"Very good, John. Even Lestrade isn't that much of a blunderer."

"But he didn't know you were connected."

"Because someone didn't want him to know. They didn't want me to go in forewarned. Everything was staged- not just the setting."

"They wanted your reaction."

"They got my reaction." Sherlock furrowed his brow,, because these new deaths might have been engineered just to get his attention.

"He was watching you." Understanding bloomed on John's face. "He was there. Someone was on the inside.

"Yes." A chance. The killer couldn't hide forever.

"He'll be long gone by now, but there's a thread there for you to follow." John's face was suddenly incandescent with hope and faith. John, who knew that Sherlock could, _would_, find the sick bastard who had torn so many people apart.

John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.

Sherlock had been in such upheaval lately, mental turmoil where there had been only- no. Call it what it was. He'd been in emotional turmoil, and putting away his feelings until they were forgotten was no longer a valid, working solution.

John was at the center of the maelstrom, a simple, ordinary figure at the eye of a hurricane. He had blithely entered Sherlock's life and proceeded to take it over centimeter by centimeter, until Sherlock was grasping only tatters of his independence_ (loneliness_.)

Sherlock pulled John in to a kiss, putting everything he couldn't articulate into it though he kept the connection soft and non-aggressive. He wanted to take all of his heartbreak and sorrow, all of his time alone and bereft, and let John transmute it. It wasn't a long kiss, but it was the only vivid point of color in a world gone to ash. John's brightness wasn't like Sherrinford's. Hers had been the warm gold of the sun. It nurtured, it warmed. John's was the hot, dense dot before the big bang. Powerful. Explosive. All-consuming in the aftermath. Too much to be contained, like Sherlock's head.

He buried his face in John's shoulder and breathed him in, wanting to say so much, for once not knowing how to say it, just that it needed to be said. He didn't know if it was simply alexithemia, or if it was the overload of feeling that he was working through. Everything felt foreign; the pain, the dark undertow of emotion, even this burgeoning longing for John. Everything that he had kept bottled tight had become pressurized enough to burst at once, the new murders creating an open valve.

There were things that demanded a voice, independent of Sherlock's brain, but he kept them swaddled tight. He knew this was not the time to talk about his (their?) inchoate love. And anything but comfort John would react to with horror, as if this personal nadir negated any informed consent.

Still, he had to try. John had to understand because Sherlock didn't know what would come next. He was stumbling blind in this.

John needed to know. John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.

"John...you..." Sherlock rested his forehead against John's cheek. Poor John, who looked unsure and worried, solid and dependable.

How do you tell someone that they are everything?

"Maria Callas' voice was far from perfect. Flawed." Sherlock spoke softly in John's ear. "It deteriorated rapidly."

"Yes?" John looked befuddled at the sudden change in subject, the tangent Sherlock's thoughts had taken, but he remained patient, used to it, and having it explained to him.

"Everyone knows who Maria Callas is. Everyone. She will be a star forever."

"You're being opaque."

"And you are being obtuse. But that is the point entirely. You are far from perfect. Flawed." Sherlock hugged him close as if he were about to be snatched away . "But there will never be another like you."


	5. Chapter 5

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons

No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them at all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

The Requiem Aeternam from War Requiem by Benjamin Britten

Poem by Wilfred Owen

A Drawing-down of Blinds

They were waiting.

His bedroom was cool and twilight-coloured with a crisp atmosphere due to the steady bite of the rain. His computer was playing music, one of his calming playlists: Shriekback's _Faded Flowers, _Leonard Cohen's_ Suzanne, _John Coltrane's_ A Love Supreme, _Kraftwerk's_ Trans Europe Express_; other things that were soft and rich. Stories and odysseys he'd assembled to soothe his thoughts and take the edges off, like water slowly winnowing away at rock until it became smooth - or a chasm.

Sherlock was infinitely patient during a case when he might have to finesse a suspect over a period of days, or conduct an interminable stake-out in the freezing cold. He found that it was quite different when it was something under your own skin, and he felt raw and twitchy. Mycroft had texted him periodically, _wonder what he was doing that he couldn't call_, but there was little for Sherlock to do until Mycroft brought him intel. Anathema though it had once been, he sat tight and waited on his elder brother, knowing that they had to divide the labor efficiently, with no 'haring off into trouble.'

**Camera found at crime scene. Common parts, no traces. MH**

Haring off into trouble was what he did, but he bowed, no, _grudgingly gave way_, to the necessity. Mycroft was an orb weaver, and his network of informants easily eclipsed Sherlock's own.

**Suspect either moved or was incarcerated. Looking into recent criminal releases and backgrounds. International informants are searching for similar M.O. in other countries. MH**

As rational and reasonable as it sounded, staying home and letting others gather data was difficult. Sherlock was used to relying on himself, solving his own cases, and he didn't trust anyone else to devote the same single-minded purpose to the cause. He didn't like interference even when it was something comparatively stupid, like missing bureaucratic data, so having to delegate parts of an investigation into his own twin's killer cut into him marrow-deep and left him overstrung.

**Are you going through the particulars of that file I left? MH**

That was the crux of his dilemma: He _had_ work to do. There was a puzzle to solve, right here, right now. He even reached for the file, but something stayed his hand as the music changed from Cohen's tea and oranges to a tenor wail. Coltrane's _Psalm_ began; moody, intense saxophone tone poetry that made a mockery of his mood. Psalm meant the good news, but there was no good news here. This was music written about the work- not Sherlock's, but Coltrane's. Sherlock leaned over to his bedside to smack his computer silent. He didn't want to be party to the appreciation of someone else's work when he couldn't even bring himself to perform his own.

Yes. The crux of his problem. The music had layered a good dose of irony on an already untenable situation.

**I'm finding it difficult. SH**

**How so? MH**

**I require your help. SH**

Sherlock sometimes wished that he could lose himself in Buddhist contemplation, because the idea of no-self or emptiness was a powerful draw. He could wrap his mind around the philosophical constructs, but he could only go so far and no further, because Sherlock had no belief within him for something he couldn't fathom through his senses.

He'd read copious amounts on religion as a teen, but didn't find any comfort in it, and honestly hadn't expected to. Sherrinford was _gonegonegone_, and he didn't even visit her grave because that was all about transport anyway.

He didn't miss the _transport_.

And he couldn't bring himself to believe in an afterlife to make that hurt any less.

**Help, or support? MH**

**Can't it be both? SH**

**Yes. MH**

**Yes. MH**

He should be able to function without big brother. His assistance here, while not quite exculpatory, was _slightly_ redemptive. Untenable situation, this.

But strangely comforting in some ways, all the same.

shshshshshshshshsh

Sherlock stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall as he looked at John. John hadn't noticed him yet, and Sherlock took his time to study him, since John was unselfconscious and natural in a way he never was when under close scrutiny. John under examination became challenging; it was in the way he stood, in the way he lifted his chin. His shoulders went tense with military squareness and tightened muscles. Aggressive in all things.

Was it short-man syndrome? Sherlock didn't think so.

John commanded.

How everyone didn't see a big flashing sign over John's head that screamed 'dominant bastard' Sherlock had no idea. John worked wonders with only a bland smile, bonhomie and the boxy-beige atrocities, the look-at-how-harmless-I-am jumpers. Amazing visuospatial resonance. He gave the appearance of one thing until you got in close, personal; then the frequency of the second image resolved into the real John. It shouldn't have worked, yet it was an effective smoke screen because people did not observe. _Stupidstupidstupid_. Even Moriarty had missed the steel core beneath John's excellent facade.

John finally felt himself being watched and looked up from his laptop screen; the blue light of his browser washing his face pale and throwing the lines that illustrated his features into high relief.

"I find your nose absurd."

John gave a startled laugh. "Thanks."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow in question.

"I'm just happy you noticed my nose at all." John smiled at Sherlock, but his eyes were serious. "What are we doing?"

"We," Sherlock emphasized, "are doing nothing." He could hear the petulance in his own voice, even though he had chosen the route of non-action. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. He knew it was a defensive gesture, and that John saw more than was apparent, especially anything that smacked of vulnerability, but he did it all the same. "We're waiting on intel."

"I'm sorry."

Sherlock looked at the floor but didn't say a word to that. An entire conversation had already been and gone in John's two words; no need to hash it out in the open just for the sake of redundancy and vocal exercise.

"Is there anything I can do?"

Anything. Everything. John could take the pain that rested in his chest like lead shot and surgically extract it. John could hunt down everyone who had ever made Sherlock doubt himself and make them squirm. John could find the man who did this thing and tear him apart piece by piece until he was reduced to a husk as empty as his heart. John could reach the moon and cure cancer and save the goddamn planet from nuclear annihilation and global climate change because he willed it so.

"You already turned me down."

"I said no fucking, Sherlock." John folded the laptop shut and set it aside. "And nothing right then. You weren't..."

"I'm fully capable of consent," Sherlock scoffed.

"You are _now_."

The rest of that sentence remained unaddressed, but Sherlock heard it all the same. You weren't then. You weren't in your right mind. You didn't know what you wanted. You were - not right. But Sherlock also heard the new assent in John's voice and took advantage of that. "Yes. I am."

Sherlock crossed the room and sat at John's feet, resting his head on John's knee. If John was surprised he didn't show it, just raised his right hand to Sherlock's head and began to stroke his fingers through Sherlock's hair. Sherlock hummed at the feeling before he spoke. "Mycroft will be here in a little over an hour, and I need to do two things before then."

"What's that?"

"I need you." Sherlock rubbed his face into John's thigh and smelled him, John scent. "Whatever you want to give me, I'll take it. Nothing else compares."

"Not even..."

"Don't make me say it. You're already full of yourself."

"Arse." John's voice was tinged with fond exasperation. "And the other thing that needs doing?"

But Sherlock just shook his head and waited. He didn't want to discuss the other. That was between him and-

"Okay. Yes." John tilted Sherlock's face up so that they were eye to eye. Sherlock nodded at him, slow and automatic as John pulled him up, planting a soft kiss on his lips, tugging his bottom lip into John's mouth where John gently worried at it with his teeth.

John pulled away and gave Sherlock a soft push. "Go. Bedroom. I don't want Mycroft to get an eyeful if he gets here early."

Sherlock snorted at that. "Serve him right."

"It would put me off."

"He puts everyone off. Like a grandmother and a vicar in one."

Sherlock turned and took John by the hand, walking backwards, still facing John, not wanting to break that connection. He pulled him through the kitchen and into his room, and John went, quiet and considering, but Sherlock didn't make the mistake of thinking that leading John through the flat equalled leading John in anything else. If John was led it was because he allowed it.

John shut the door behind himself and leaned against it with false casualness. He nodded to Sherlock, a deep bow of the head that told Sherlock everything he needed to know.

So he dropped to his knees.

"Close your eyes."

He obeyed John, and closing his eyes was like a long exhale after a deep Aum projected from the diaphragm. It should be disconcerting. He should close his eyes and find himself alone with only his tenebrous thoughts, but there was no hesitation, and no real darkness when he did so because John was directing this, and John meant that it was never truly dark. John could take chaotic, stochastic systems, continuums of dendroid thought, and make sense of all the conflicting information. There was a rhythm to this now, and the act of obeisance, the surrendering of his will, automatically started his journey towards that plane of clear thought. Rightness. Substance. Mathematical precision of his instruments.

A lack of pain.

He heard a susurrus of fabric. John moving.

John came to rest behind him, and Sherlock felt hands on his shoulders, kneading the muscle there. Until John had touched him he had no idea just how tight he was wound, and he groaned as clever thumbs dug into the indentations of his spine and shoulders.

"That good?"

"Yes."

John continued his deep massage, thumbs digging in almost painfully, but the release of pressure afterwards was exquisite. "We don't have enough time."

"I know."

"Hush."

Sherlock sighed and relaxed even further into John's fingers.

"I was saying. We don't have enough time to do all that I would like to." Sherlock was close enough to the bed that John was able to sit down on its edge without taking his hands away from Sherlock's back. Sherlock could feel their heat and pressure as John leaned in, putting his mouth right next to Sherlock's ear. "So this will just give you a taste of what will happen later."

Sherlock groaned but didn't say anything. He wanted to be good for John. Like John was so, so good for him.

"We don't have enough time," John's hands tightened on his shoulders, "but I can tell you everything that I want to do to you."

"Yes."

"I told you to be quiet." John's left hand moved over his shoulder and around his neck, pulling him back into John's knee. He was thrown off balance, had to catch himself, but John's hand on his throat didn't waiver, and the knees against his vertebrae were unforgiving, and his head fell back, looking up at John upside down, watching John's avid interest in his face, John's widening pupils, lips parted in a half-smile.

John's hand tightened, but it was firm, not choking. Possessive, not controlling.

Fine line, that.

John's other hand snaked down Sherlock's front, down his chest and abdomen to grasp the bottom of Sherlock's t-shirt. He pulled it over Sherlock's head, but only just, leaving it wrapped around his shoulders and bunched up behind Sherlock's neck to give John a clear view of Sherlock's naked chest and rapidly tightening nipples.

"Undo everything else. I want to see."

John liked the power play of being fully clothed in juxtaposition to Sherlock's nudity. Sherlock liked it too. He'd never understood shame over the human form. He had some problems with fabrics irritating his skin, a common sensory issue, and often went nude as a child, much to his parents' displeasure. Even now he only bought the best fabrics, and he wore his t-shirts and socks inside out because he didn't like tags or thick seams against his skin. It'd driven John spare when he'd found out that Sherlock always slept bare-arsed on 600 thread count sheets.

Some people got off on the vulnerability, but it had never been such a turn-on with previous partners; John must be the fulcrum. John enjoyed Sherlock's nudity, part aesthetic appreciation, part fantasy fulfilment, because it underscored how very willing Sherlock was to do what John demanded.

Nudity? Alright. Tawse to your buttocks? No problem. You want what where? Yes, please.

Sherlock's hands went to the drawstring of his soft yoga bottoms, unknotting them and pulling at the cord till it loosened. The waistband caught on his cock for a moment before the fabric slipped free and puddled around his knees.

John hummed with appreciation and he looked down at Sherlock's body, as he ran his hands over everything he could reach, a slow glide of calloused fingers that made Sherlock's pulse pick up speed in response.

"I don't think I spend enough time just touching you."

Sherlock snorted, but John ignored the scoffing sound.

"We're always racing towards something else. I think I want to get you off quick one day then just spend hours mapping your body. Become a human cartographer." John ran his nose against the nape of Sherlock's neck and up just behind Sherlock's ear where he took a deep breath. "Until I know everything. Put it in my memory palace."

"You don't have a memory palace."

"I should. For this." John took Sherlock by the shoulders once more and pressed. "Budge up."

Sherlock scooted forward and John sat behind him, dragging Sherlock back to sit down between his spread knees, resting in the cradle of his thighs. "Your depth of processing needs work. If you consider the self as a mnemonic device-"

"Sherlock. Context."

"Oh." Sherlock went quiet again, letting John take over.

John's hands were becoming more focused now. They played over his nipples and belly button, but John was bowing to the time constraint imposed on him and quickly homed in on Sherlock's cock.

It was an interesting perspective. Sherlock could look down at his own body and marvel, when he usually only treated it to passing boredom and general maintenance. Sherlock took no pride in his looks, and was in fact rather mystified at the attraction that his underbelly-of-a-fish pale skin held. But the sight of John's hand closing around him shaded everything with a layer of buzzing eroticism, and in moments like this he could suddenly see his own appeal through the lens of John's attraction.

John's fist closed around him, tight, and Sherlock inhaled a sharp breath that sucked in his stomach and clenched his teeth. John's other hand came around to cradle his bollocks, and Sherlock could feel John's clothed erection in the small of his back, and John's cheek resting against his shoulders. John stroked him, just shy of too tight, from base to tip, and rolled his balls in the other hand. No lubricant, just Sherlock's own pre-ejaculate, so it was rather rough. Rather perfect.

"No preliminaries this time, but if I had the option we'd take this so slow." John squeezed his left hand, and just shy of too tight became much too tight. Amazingly too tight, and Sherlock couldn't help the whine that escaped him. "I'd have time for accoutrements."

Sherlock could feel John's eyelashes flutter against his back, and that more than the grinding of John's erection into his backside told him that John was not untouched by what was happening. The hand around his scrotum tightened as well, then pulled, down, down, and that was brutal and intense. The pleasure of the sex act was at war with the pain, and it was a physical type of interference effect, cognitive processes halted during the interpretation in his working memory. The hand on his cock said yesyesyes, the memory of previous cock torture and all it could do for him was of crystalline clarity, but that first stab of pain with little lead-in was telling his lizard brain to bolt. He was teetering on the precipice of reconciliation between the two, and the tension, both mind and body, was perfectly tuned.

John eased his grip, going back to the slow stroking, and Sherlock sighed and sagged in both relief and surrender. The removal of the pain was almost as great a pleasure as the masturbation; the endorphin rush added to the previous rush of the sex act, gorgeous. "I'd take time to shave you bare. Skin smooth, soft." John's voice was lyrical and followed the tempo set by his hand. "But not because of the way it would look. I'd get you nice and hairless down here so it wouldn't get pulled out, after."

"P-pulled?"

"Lay you out, everything exposed to the cool air. Your eyes would still be shut and you'd have no idea what was coming before the first drip of hot wax hit your cock...right...here." John squeezed the head on his upstroke and Sherlock was suddenly breathless. "I'd start with the candle higher, so the wax would be cooler as it hit your skin." John was lipping at him now, punctuating his sentences with hot presses against his spine and neck. "Then lower it. Coating everything with a thin layer of wax. Maybe even a hot slide into your urethra."

"Fuck." John's grip had tightened again around his balls, and this time he'd added nails to the mix, digging into the soft flesh, and almost strangling the glans with his other hand. Sherlock writhed as well as he could, but he was pinned against John, and if he moved too much the pull became exponentially worse, better, he was no longer sure. John held on for longer this time, seconds ticking over, another ten, another twenty. An extra minute, a small eternity before he released the pressure. Sherlock had drawn his body into a tight arch, but became supple and boneless with the removal of the pain. John resumed the stroking, and the speech that was unspooling Sherlock even more than John's hands.

"Until the candle is so close to the skin that you feel the heat of the flame, and the burn of the wax is so intense that you cry out with every new drip." John's voice and breathing were becoming ragged, and Sherlock's breath matched it in an amazing stereo. "Afterwards I would slowly peel away the layers of wax to show the skin beneath. You're so pale, but I bet you'd be pink and sensitized from the wax. Your nerve endings would be like live wires as I touched you. Stroked you just...like..this..."

"Nngh."

John sped his hand up on Sherlock's cock, and once more clenched around Sherlock's testicles and didn't let go even as Sherlock cried out and started to shake.

"I've got so many fantasies, you've no idea. I would lie awake nights in my bed and try to imagine you like this, but it was never this good. My imagination isn't this real or raw."

"I want..."

"What?" John panted against Sherlock's neck, and that was almost an equal to the shock of pleasure coursing through him in repetitive oscillations of both agony and bliss.

"All of it. Everything."

"Everything I want?"

"Everything you are."

John made a sound that was almost a sob before letting go of Sherlock. Sherlock huffed in protest, but John took him by the shoulders and pushed him over so that Sherlock landed on his back. Sherlock blinked at him, frustrated, and began to scowl, but John reached his hands out to pet him, patting and stroking his chest as if to gentle him, and looked at him. Looked at him with wide eyes, epiphany eyes. "You. Are. An. Idiot."

John put one hand on Sherlock's chest, pressing him to the floor, and swooped down to swallow Sherlock's cock down to the root.

"Shit!"

John just hummed in agreement and licked up to the head, slicking everything with saliva before adding his hand back to the mix. John concentrated his mouth on the glans, running his tongue along the edge where the foreskin was bunched, tender skin that made the sound buckle in his throat as it was sucked.

Sherlock was already worked up, but this, John doing this for him after that build-up, John sucking at him, submitting to Sherlock's needs instead of his own, it was wrong. Wrong, and wonderful, and Sherlock was so, so...

"I'm close."

John nodded around his cock and didn't stop sucking in rapid counterpoint to the hand stroking the base. His mouth would descend as his hand slid up, then the quick pull up that threatened removal before he entered the downward attack. Sherlock felt the deliberate slip of a canine along his length and gasped, suddenly at the brink, and he couldn't help it when his hands came up to hold John's head, buried in his hair, the short strands crisp against his fingers as John _movedmovedmoved_. Moved him.

"God. John. Yes."

His bollocks pulled up tight. His cock swelled with an added rush of blood. John hummed, a vibration of approval that shook everything into a split second of high fidelity before a cascade of white overrode his vision and he was coming, coming into John's mouth, brain going offline in a wonderful cessation of fuliginous anger and grief.

The lack was amazing. A single moment of respite.

John had given him that. John, with no expectation of reciprocation. Sherlock panted, unable to catch his breath. "That. That was-"

John's arms came around him, cradling him. "You're still an idiot." John sounded almost pained. He was still hard against Sherlock's spine, but he slapped Sherlock's hand down when he made a move to touch him.

"_I'm_ an idiot?"

"I've incontrovertible proof of it."

"That's a big claim."

"Everything I am?"

Sherlock smiled and took pleasure in the rapid beating of his own heart. "I'll have it one day."

John sniffed in derision. "It's been yours since the pool."

shshshshshshshshsh

Sherlock sat on the sofa, examining the thick manila folder in front of him as if it were a plague rat. Sherlock could feel John looking at him and he raised his head to see worry in his eyes, tempered by tentative wonder at their earlier exchange. John sat down beside him, thigh touching Sherlock's, as though his presence was support enough to get him through. And perhaps it was.

Sherlock had dressed in a suit, after. He had no way of knowing what would be required of them later and he wanted to be prepared. John had foregone his own orgasm in an act of self-abnegation that Sherlock didn't quite understand, and had spent several minutes in the loo afterwards, running cold water.

Sherlock wanted to thank John for taking him away for a moment but he didn't have the vocabulary. He had the grammar of lips and body, submission in any form John wanted, in order to communicate his gratitude, but John wouldn't allow it. John had seemed to derive pleasure simply from giving him pleasure.

Sherlock had never felt so powerful. Or humbled.

It was the first half of a two part process. John had altruistically given him a moment of clarity and normality, preparing him for a much more onerous task of self-mastery.

"We need to go through the evidence." John kept his voice quiet, non-provoking. Sherlock had been too broken to examine the actual scene, and of course John would worry about Sherlock castigating himself for such a human weakness. As if Sherlock hadn't proven beyond a shadow of doubt that he had human weaknesses. Maybe more than most. How _dull_, being like everyone else for once.

"Can you do that?"

Sherlock looked at him with derision, a look that he hoped John translated as of course, you tosser.

John reached for the file but Sherlock brought his hand down to cover John's. "No. Pin them up. I don't think I can trust my memory alone right now." Sherlock frowned. "Too many...preconceptions." Ghosts. Emotions. Was this what people meant by haunted? Hunted, more like. "It plays havoc with detached, deductive reasoning."

"Pin them how."

"With a tack."

John rolled his eyes and Sherlock smirked.

"Victimology. Latest victims first, then in reverse chronological order. Particularly close ups of detail. And the writing. The earlier ones didn't have a message."

"And then?"

"We wait for Mycroft."

John turned around and stared at him.

Sherlock returned his stare. "He's come to the same conclusions. Well before I did. He has feelers out already, looking for similar modus operandi and whoever was watching us at the scene. I can't..." Sherlock trailed off, thinking about the task before them. "I can usually indulge in spiting Mycroft."

"But not today."

"This is more important."

John went back to pinning papers and photos to the wall. "And what will you be doing?"

"Something that I should have done hours ago."

shshshshshshshshsh

The violin case itself was relatively contemporary, no older than Sherlock, and high quality, if forgettable. Not that the case mattered at all.

It was nondescript transport and protection for the violin. _The_ violin.

'It's named Eurydice,' she'd said with a smile. She'd exaggerated the Italian pronunciation, drawing out its syllables with relish as she stroked her first full-sized violin. "You-ri-DEE-chay. Like the opera."

'Sounds feeble, then.'

'She wasn't feeble!'

'Dying from snakebite then needing to be rescued by a man who botches the rescue anyway? Sounds feeble to me.'

He stroked the spruce soundboard, traced the French curve of the f-hole with a forefinger as it lay somnolent against the burgundy crushed velvet of the case.

She hadn't spoken to him for three hours after; she hadn't spoken to him until he'd apologised. It was a grudging, tiny little sorry that he gave her in the end, but it was there.

The sound of Eurydice was anything but feeble, that much was true. Eurydice, meaning she whose justice extends widely.

He picked her up with reverence, one hand at the tailpiece and chin rest, the other cradling the maple neck. He ran a thumb over the steel e string, pressing it into the ebony fingerboard and feeling the tension and possibility there, as if the violin existed in a constant state of anticipation.

He knew that he was anthropomorphising an inanimate object, and that it was irrational, but Sherrinford had practically demanded that he acknowledge the violin's sentience, and he found that, even now, he could do naught but humor her.

Sherlock had aged despite all odds, but he was still humoring Sherrinford, who would ever be nine years old in his mind's eye.

He sluiced his eyes over her curves, turning Eurydice over to admire the vibrant flame-figured wood of the back with its gentle slopes. Eurydice wasn't flashy, but she had quality in every form and line, every material the best available, every consideration put into her creation.

Sherlock wasn't just being fanciful when he called her Eurydice. He wasn't only indulging someone long dead or wallowing in sentimentality. Sherlock was honoring the century-gone luthier who had made her with so much passion. You couldn't name an object, but you could name a personality, and that is what the violin maker had wrought.

Sherlock sat and placed Eurydice in his lap before withdrawing his bow from the case and tightening the hair. He had recently applied the light rosin cake for greater stiction, and he could still smell a faint whiff of rosin, pungent, concentrated pine like incense in a church sensor, which never failed to remind him of Respighi, _memory palace = pine = Pines of Rome = Respighi = third shelf, Composers, R.A._

He had originally played to feel closer to his sister, and for that first year after her death he had done little else. The case, the violin, had still smelled of her. Lavender, baby powder, vanilla like sugary biscuits hot from the oven. He'd slept in her bed and played her violin, but the focus of his olfactory obsession had faded over that year, until it existed only in his imagination, and soon he could not recall the exact scent of her, and the case began to smell like they all smelled, the faint must of aging fabric, bitter rosin and polished wood.

He would not be playing Respighi today.

Sherlock picked up the violin and placed it under his chin, resting it against his collarbone. He picked up the bow, his thumb under the frog, adjusting his hold before he applied it to the strings, pulling a quick downbow near the bridge.

No, not Respighi. Something of this nature called for the monumental.

Sherlock inhaled, held it, then exhaled with precise focus before he began to play.

The first four measures, the somber thematic statement. Then variations on that theme. Bach's Chaconne was a dance as the name suggested, but it was so much more than that. The beginning of the first minor, which so many people (idiots) equated with birth, announced that this piece would be epic in scope.

Two minutes.

Thematic transformation, chord substitution, sarabande rhythm.

Sherlock played with a subtle vibrato, vibrato on the stopped chords, very controlled. There was no such thing as vibrato in a true Baroque context, but he was a modern interpreter/interpolator, and he stayed true to the spirit of the piece. The bow, linear, continuous, beautiful internal resonance. He tried not to break the chords, and his legato technique, sometimes unsure, did not fail him today when he needed it most.

Laying the foundation, building blocks in the air to create this...no, not a cathedral. Too much yearning for that. A Taj Mahal. A tomb for a beloved.

Many scholars disputed the idea that Bach created the Chaconne as a tombeau for his beloved wife, Maria Barbara, mother to his many children. Sherlock assumed that those scholars had never played Bach, and had never known grief, for if the Chaconne was not a tombeau, then a true tombeau had never been played.

Bach's mother had died when he was nine, his father, when he was ten. He was raised by a brother and married young, and though he had many children, his twins died only weeks after their birth. Before he was even 35 he was widowed while on a trip, had come home to find his wife already buried. He wrote the partita soon after.

Four minutes.

The partita wasn't just a tombeau written for the dead. All of Bach's work was, in some form, a memorial.

Sherlock saw himself there, too. He saw beauty triumph over the pain. Pain became exalted, and with the thematic variation it became something new altogether: deep introspection that demanded the soul of the player. It was not unlike what he shared with John.

Six minutes.

The dark minor key became a major key, and the entire work was lifted up, became a spiritual construct in the air, layer upon layer of shifting sound, architecture without true substance, perfect in its shimmering complexity. A castle in the sky. Buttressed, intersecting geometry, stained glass panels that refracted the light with prism-like efficiency. Transparency and sweeping sound. Genetic pyrotechnics, small explosions of exultation before returning to the original theme.

Sherlock was an atheist, but this was almost holy.

Eight minutes.

When Sherlock played the violin his mind was often on other things. He could play and think through a particularly difficult problem, or let his mind wander where it would, since the playing was almost automatic, and the technique refined. But there was no playing the Chaconne without being _in_ the Chaconne. It made demands on the player, immersed him in its complexity, and just when he thought that he had a complete grasp on it, it effervesced into nothing, and he had to chase it once again.

It engaged him on all levels: emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. There was no such thing as an expert when it came to the Chaconne. It could be played for a lifetime without the musician having a firm grasp upon it.

Ten minutes.

Sherlock closed his eyes and put everything into his playing. Intensity, focus, concentration, emotive power. Rich, dense, multifarious, phrase shadings and implied counterpoint. So much to focus on, so much to interpret. The move from the major key back into the minor key.

The everything of it - importuning anguish, joy, love, sorrow, beautiful and glorious with a dark, bitter bite that never made it anything less than reassurance of the spirit. This was music that told a person why they bothered living.

It was sublime.

Twelve minutes.

Brahms once wrote of the Chaconne that, "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

The Chaconne, so powerful a human creation that it has reached the same level of impossibility as Lovecraft's Old Ones, able to drive men mad just with the knowledge that it existed.

In a world that often seemed to be nothing but blemishes and battlefield, the Chaconne was...absolutely...

Perfect.

Fourteen minutes.

He played the last note, drawing the bow a final time, and went silent, head bowed in a moment of gravid silence.

The finish. The end. Bach's masterpiece. A pinnacle of human achievement on par with placing a man on the moon. This was the music that heralded the dawn of the Enlightenment.

He felt John behind him, and someone else, Mycroft, quietly observing him. No one wanted to break the silence, break the cantrip the violin had spelled, but eventually Sherlock brought Eurydice down to his lap and laid the bow on the nearby table. He looked out the window at the rain that still fell in a steady tap-tap, felt the weight of excess gravity holding him down.

He stroked the violin again, wanting to praise it but unable to give in to such a fanciful notion. Instead, he loosened the hair on his bow before turning his attention to his violin. The moment was proud and beautiful, sad and noble, and laying Eurydice in the case was like a burial, adding the bow like the laying on of flowers; pulling down the lid, the final snick of the clasps as he pressed them closed, like a farewell.

It was the very best he had ever played.

He would never surpass it.

And Sherlock would never, _ever_ play the Chaconne again. There was a first time for everything; and a last time for everything as well.

He turned towards John and Mycroft, finally centered. Finally _Sherlock _after too many hours of being buried in grief. He wasn't perfectly himself - he wasn't even quite sure what or who that was any more, but he could do what was necessary, what had been deferred for much too long.

Time enough for mourning when this was done.

"I'm ready."

shshshshshshshshsh

Thank you all for your support, especially my betas, Pennypaperbrain, Emmadelosnardos, and Vector_nyu.

Please review; it means a lot to me.

The next part in the series will be The Minstrel Boy To The War Is Gone.


	6. Chapter 6

My thanks to my beta, Pennypaperbrain. All mistakes are my own. Sorry this took so long, but my real life John Watson was in an accident, so life has not been easy this past five months.

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,

In the ranks of death ye will find him.

from Owen Wingrave

Composer: Benjamin Britten

Libretto: Myfanwy Piper

Original Lyrics by Thomas Moore

The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone

It had stopped raining by the time Mycroft's sleek black car pulled up to the industrial site's parking lot. Sherlock's feet hit the uneven concrete with a wet slap, but instead of running for the door like he had previously he waited for both John and Mycroft, who kept a stupidly sedate pace as they navigated their way around the puddled water that had collected during the cascaded over the water, turning it alternately black and preternaturally irridescent as it caught the oil-slick rainbow that swirled and eddied in tidal miniature.

He was normally impatient waiting for others, when they pulled him down to their level of sloth, when they held him back, when they expected him to bring them up to his speed instead of getting there themselves, but this wasn't that kind of impatience. This might not have been impatience at all, but it held the same flavor of discontent, rancid on his tongue.

He didn't want to revisit the scene, yet he must.

He didn't want any part of this case, yet he was compelled to submerge himself in it.

Impatience flavored with wariness, then.

He was eager for answers but he was carefully weighting scales that tipped precariously between elation at finally having the information to find Sherrinford's murderer and horror at the path he must take to get there.

A police cruiser and a van were pulled into the front corner of the uneven lot. Sherlock turned a look of half-hearted accusation on Mycroft as he came around the front of the car but Mycroft barely looked at him and forged ahead, as if Sherlock were the one lollygagging.

John closed the door behind himself and looked indecisive. He wasn't shifting his feet or any other big tell, but there was something around his eyes that told Sherlock that he was thinking of staying behind, in some misplaced attempt to keep out of the way. Give them 'their space'.

As if that would help.

Sherlock tugged him forward by the elbow and frowned at him until he fell into step.

"We didn't need them for this. I could have-"

"Breaking and entering at a crime scene might be something you enjoy, but I try to make a habit of staying within channels if possible."

"When useful, you mean." John was a perfect straight man, his eyes and his mouth giving nothing away.

Mycroft shrugged then put on his polite company face.

Lestrade was waiting for them where the crime scene tape was strung between the wasted ends of a weather-eaten chain-link fence. His coat was too thin for the weather and he'd pulled his head into the collar like a turtle.

Mycroft did a quick dip under the tape then held it up for Sherlock and John to pass. "Thank you for coming out, Detective Inspector."

"Piss off, Lestrade."

Mycroft looked like he found Sherlock's vulgarity distasteful, but he didn't argue with it as Sherlock ducked under the tape to follow. "We are quite busy."

Sherlock turned towards Lestrade and deliberately invaded his personal space. Lestrade was never one to be physically intimidated Sherlock knew, especially by someone he was familiar with and often found vaguely ridiculous, but Sherlock was banking on the man's blokey abhorrence of emotional exhibitionism to carry it off. He'd put on quite a show earlier, after all.

Lestrade had a restlessness about him that spoke volumes, and layered on top of the lack of sleep, the strain on his relationship with his wife and the fact that most of his friends were her friends if they divorced, money troubles in the face of nuptial deconstruction and the threat of his children wondering where daddy was while mummy made nice with whomever…Lestrade should back down.

But Sherlock hadn't calculated properly for Lestrade's paternal idiom.

"I wasn't just going to open everything up and leave. I wanted to check on you."

That was the problem with Lestrade. He looked like he'd rather be somewhere else, but there was some appalling fatherly core inside him that made him parent everyone, some over-active nurturing gene that wanted everyone to wear their wellies and a coat because it was cold and wet out, _damn it_. And despite everything he had a soft spot for Sherlock, which baffled Sherlock completely.

A soft spot _in the head_, perhaps.

Mycroft gave Lestrade a pointed look. "As you can see, I have things well in hand Detective Inspector."

"I came to check in on the both of you, you git."

Sherlock made a guttural scoffing noise in the back of his throat. "And you thought it was a good idea to bring them?" He waved towards the building where Donovan and Anderson were huddled against the wall, trying to stave off the biting wind. "This is ludicrous. I need to think!"

"I got the old files this afternoon." Lestrade looked awkward, like he didn't know what to say. And what was there to say? Sherlock was perversely happy that Lestrade kept the worst to himself. He had nothing new to add. There, there? It will be alright? Time heals all wounds? None of the usual platitudes Lestrade was so fond of were remotely true or welcomed. Sherlock had heard every single one before age ten and if they were a trite lot of nothing and total bollocks then, they were hardly going to get better with age.

"Bully for you. I'm sure they all had a good laugh."

Greg shook his head in a denial. "You should have told me." He looked like a child suddenly finding himself abandoned in a shop.

Lestrade'd had to completely restructure everything he'd thought he'd known about Sherlock, and the new perception didn't look anything like the old one, apparently. The Sherlock of two days ago had been easy to label and dismiss as unfeeling. Sherlock knew what they thought; hadn't cared what they thought. A drug-addled, posh tit who didn't give two shits about anyone but himself.

But a self-centered rich-boy junkie was an easier figure to sum up and dismiss than a Sherlock who'd loved and had that love cruelly ripped away. Sherlock: annoying git was trumped by Sherlock: tragic past, apparently. And now he had to deal with dreary Yarder guilt. He could see it in Lestrade's face, his hands.

The bit-not-good sliver of schadenfreude that Sherlock felt because of it almost made him smile.

Let Lestrade squirm. Just a bit.

He'd probably let Sherlock get away with anything now. Sherlock would have said murder, but he was quite sure that Lestrade already knew about the cabbie and hadn't done anything towards investigating it. Practically a green light.

"Told you? On one of our many pub nights? Over a cuppa? While we braided each other's hair?" Sherlock blinked. "I need to think and your presence is antithetical to that." Very much so. He analysed everything; he didn't need to be crunching data on the police as well as the crime scene. Sherlock raised his voice to carry towards the building even though much of it was whipped away by the wind. "Anderson, you've the face of a non-Euclidean Picasso. I can feel myself being sucked into entropy everytime I look at you."

Anderson glared, straightening from his lean against the brick wall and strutting forward, even though Sally was pulling him back by the sleeve and whispering furiously. He shook her off and stuck his nose up in a pugnacious look that was at odds with his weasel face. "You can't consult if you're part of the case."

"Recuse myself? I think-"

"I'm not here as _moral support_." Anderson used air quotes; sure sign of a weak mind. "I'm here for a DNA sample." He crossed his arms _defensive gesture, classic overcompensation_, very tedious, and looked at Sherlock with an unconcealed contempt that left him stymied. He had no idea what platform of superiority Anderson was working from.

"You _have_DNA samples." Mycroft sounded laconic and bored, but Sherlock could never be fooled by that tone. Gaboon vipers looked fat and relaxed just before they struck, too.

Anderson eyed up Mycroft, weighing his involvement. "Maybe...maybe not."

"Anderson!" Lestrade barked.

"Who's to say what his brother tampered with? Who's to say that he isn't reliving his crime right now?"

Even Sally gasped at this. Even Sherlock blanked at the very idea, the very gall of such an insignificant man saying...that. Everything went silent for a long moment while Anderson just continued to look smug and awful. Only the steady drip of water and the distant croaking call of carrion crows cut through the stillness. Sherlock could tell that John was just about to do something, _punch Anderson in the face the throat the stomach make Anderson retch from the gut pain yes good_, his hand was curling into a loose fist and he stepped forward, but he stepped forward into Lestrade's fingers placed against his chest.

"Sherlock needs you here, not in jail for assault."

Anderson opened his filthy putrid mouth again, but Lestrade cut him off with a quiet, cold intensity that was very unlike him. "You're off the case."

Sherlock heard Anderson's jaw snap shut and thought: _I will destroy you_.

"Greg..." Sally started, but Lestrade cut her off with a look. Sally looked to the side, and her face tightened up in a moue of unhappiness. Wrong-footed over the revelation that Sherlock was actually human. Interesting. She could barely look at anyone when she had always been confrontational before. She only spoke up because defense of Anderson was second nature to her now.

Sherlock didn't know if this was a welcome change or not.

"But Lestrade-" Anderson was finally wide-eyed, just now realising that he had no allies in this.

"You're off. Malhotra's on." Lestrade turned to Sherlock, suddenly all competent business. "You like Malhotra, yeah?"

Sherlock decided that he did like this new defense of himself. It was novel and unwelcome in the extreme to all of the _right_people. "Malhotra is fine." He had to stop himself from smiling. He could be magnanimous in victory.

"Good then."

Anderson: "Am I the only one who-"

"Yes." Greg had become a drill sergeant. "Now leave. I'd told you to wait in the van anyway."

"But the DNA." He'd stretched the last into a whine, and Sherlock wondered, for what had to be the hundredth time, how Anderson had managed to fool two women into sleeping with him. He'd deduced exactly how he did it long ago, but knowing a fact and reconciling that fact with what he knew of Anderson after just a glance...it was a disgusting mental exercise.

"I can do it. Or we can wait for another tech. It'll take weeks to get back from the lab anyway."

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "If Anderson is telling the truth you should know that I was in Budapest when the first of the most recent string of murders was committed." He just barely showed his teeth. "And if testing needs to be expedited, do call my assistant."

Anderson opened his ugly maw to say something else but Lestrade slapped a hand over his jaw, took him by the shoulder and pushed him under the police tape towards the unmarked white van sitting three rows down. Finally realising that he was outnumbered, Anderson plodded over to the van in a cloud of venomous ill-will, spraying water with every heavy step in infantile protest. When Greg turned back to face Sherlock he was pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a tension headache.

"Fuck. It's not that. Talking out his arse, he is. I do need DNA, but either of you would do. We don't have any of..."

"Sherrinford's."

"...on file, no viable samples because Surrey's evidence storage is a joke. A sibling's will do just as well. We don't want to exhume."

"Do you have a swab kit?"

Greg looked at Sally, who nodded and slipped under the tape before walking to the panda car parked diagonally across two spots. "It'll just be a mo."

The silence as they waited was awkward for John and Greg, but Sherlock couldn't be arsed to care as he and Mycroft went back to their perusal of the building's exterior. Lestrade was the type to fidget in an uncomfortable hush, though, and he finally had to speak. "I suppose you won't come in for an interview."

Sherlock turned to Mycroft. "I love it when they can be trained."

"I'm redundant then?"

"The yard isn't going to solve this." Mycroft waved a hand at him. "You don't have the necessary resources."

"I'm not just going to go through the motions, you know."

Mycroft's voice was unexpectedly kind. "I know."

"Are you going to share what you find?"

"Lestrade." Sherlock's voice held a warning.

Greg put up his hands. "No jurisdictional pissing. I just want to help."

"If you _can_help, we'll ask for it."

"And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

No one had anything else to say to that so they were all decidedly not looking at each other when Sally walked back from the car, donning a clean pair of violet rubber gloves before opening a plastic evidence bag. She drew out the vial and the swab, but paused and looked at Greg for guidance. Greg nodded at her and she approached Sherlock as the Holmes siblings' lesser evil. She seemed uncomfortable about getting her fingers so near Sherlock's mouth, smart that , but didn't hesitate as he opened his mouth for the cheek swab. She was quick and clinical, with none of Anderson's fuss, and it appeared that Sally could be trained too because she didn't say one word during the process.

Mycroft and his ability to tank careers was a powerful motivator for good behavior. Or maybe it was because she too had been forced to recategorize Sherlock's behavior in light of the new case. Sherlock found himself hoping it wouldn't last long and that she'd soon be back to calling him a freak. He'd appreciate the continuity.

As soon as she had the sample sealed up she left, walking to the van instead of the car. Greg hung around for a moment more, hands in his pockets in the boyish 'aw shucks' pose he struck when he wasn't sure what to do. "I can't force you to cooperate, but please, don't leave me out of the loop." He rocked forward on his toes a bit. "It has nothing to do with being a cop, either. Just...a friend." He was addressing the three of them but he was looking at Mycroft, with all of the hideous feeling that entailed.

It was odd, but it was honestly as if Lestrade hadn't really existed before this moment. Before, he'd just been a slightly better than average copper who let Sherlock in on cases. Now Sherlock would have to go to the trouble of recategorizing people beyond enemy, victim, suspect, witness, Mrs. Hudson, John and not-John.

Dull.

"Um...right. I'll just..." Greg shuffled off to wait them out in the car, going a bit pink as he left.

Sherlock turned to Mycroft, expression carefully neutral. "You really should do something about that."

"Shut _up_." Mycroft glared at Sherlock. "And get back on task."

Sherlock smirked because he had scored a point but didn't continue his needling.

Sherlock turned to the building and fell into step with his brother as John trailed after them. John was in a toppy protective mode; the Captain, not the doctor. John wasn't trailing behind like a dog, he was doing threat assessment. He'd been protective before but the ugliness of Anderson had evidently boiled something up to the top of John's psyche, and it manifested as an alpha display of the kind John probably hadn't exhibited since the Afghani debacle that had put a hole in his shoulder.

Sherlock wondered if John's protective machismo was rooted in something slightly less altruistic. John was insecure about their relationship, that much was obvious. Anything that acted upon Sherlock with greater or equal emotional force than John was capable of was a threat to John's possession of Sherlock.

Mycroft looked a bit uncomfortable about it all and that made Sherlock want to smile, in spite of everything.

Mycroft cleared his throat and pointed at the corner of the building where a tangle of wires, obviously not up to code, entered the building.

Sherlock nodded but John just scowled.

"Elaborate, please. For the non-mind-reader."

Sherlock tsked. "I'd discounted the wiring as irrelevant. Homeless squatters often steal power from other sources. This was done quite a while ago; piggybacking energy off of the catalytic converter recycler down the street."

"Which means?"

"Our killer didn't run most of the power, but he hacked into the work of people who did." Mycroft opened the rusty door and waved them through, then turned their attention to the wire spanning the interior. There were Yard floodlights set up, now, great pools of blue fluorescence that washed out everything it touched and deepened the shadows in the corners. "Cameras." Mycroft pointed to two points on obsolete equipment, but even knowing where they were located they could not be seen with the naked eye without extremely close scrutiny.

"So he wasn't on site?" John sounded conflicted. Relieved that they hadn't been shoulder to shoulder with a murderous voyeur, angry that the immediacy of a live suspect was denied to them. John preferred human trails to electronic ones even though Sherlock had tried to tell him that they were _all_human trails.

"They used pre-existing illegal wiring meant for tellies, hot plates and heaters."

Sherlock scowled. The killer had been subtle and Sherlock had missed the obvious. The wire was spliced but the small diameter wire that ran to the hidden camera controller was almost cobweb slender, like monofilament that fooled the eye into seeing nothing. Someone had been very careful. "I take it that the cameras are a common type that can't be traced."

Mycroft shook his head. "We haven't been able to trace anything." He brought the tip of his umbrella down on the floor with an aggrieved rap. "Whoever arranged this was very, very skilled." He sighed at the end and when he blinked he kept his eyes closed for a moment. Headache.

He sounded exhausted and it made Sherlock flinch away from his bleak austerity. "You've been calling in some deep favors."

Mycroft shied him a look out of the corner of his eye and gave one almost imperceptible nod.

Legwork. Mycroft hated it, yet he'd been forced into it. Due to Sherlock's preoccupation? Or just circumstance?

Sherlock examined the patterns of dust, _dust on the floor dust on the wires even though the wires were recently manipulated no prints must collect dust samples from areas of likely tampering_. He watched dust motes catch glints of light in the thick air as he considered Mycroft's entire mien.

He'd never been an open book to Sherlock. He was an inscrutable wall, and Mycroft kept his emotions so under wraps that Sherlock had occasion to think that Mycroft might not have any feelings whatsoever; Mycroft's caring had seemed an awful lot like control. But an uncaring Mycroft wouldn't be spread so thin, and he wouldn't have shouldered so much of the work. He was the center of a web of information; he didn't do things himself, he collected the people who could. But he was beyond merely collecting now. There was something roiling below the placid calm, now; calamity below the cold veneer.

Sherrinford had been Mycroft's sister too, but Sherlock didn't know if he had ever acknowledged that. Was he doing this for Sherry? Or for Sherlock?

Sherlock didn't like not being sure, but neither did he want to ask. Asking would telegraph too much. Vulnerability. His lack of omniscience.

A part of him didn't actually want to know.

Asking might mean letting go just that little bit more and he didn't think he could do it. He was caught in this endless game of spiteful one-upmanship with his brother and there would be no way out.

They were deeper in the bowels of the factory now, heading for the room that had held the body. Sherlock forced himself to maintain a steady gait since there was no point in putting off inevitability.

The body had been removed. Barts would be their next call. The scene had been trampled into near uselessness by over-excited, under-trained, mentally incompetent mouth-breathers.

It wouldn't be near the horror of the morning. Sherlock could handle this.

"Are you sure it's the same man?" John's much shorter legs didn't eat up the ground that Sherlock's and Mycroft's devoured, so he was almost jogging to keep up. "You've both got a lot of enemies. This could be a copycat trying to psych you out."

"Very."

"I'm sure." Sherlock and Mycroft had spoken at the same time, and glanced at each other, bowing to the necessity of the uncomfortable truce, yet not quite knowing how to act around each other.

It was Sherlock who voiced their common thoughts. "Copycats are common enough, but there was too much at the new scene that was never released to the public."

They came to a stop at the interior door. Sherlock's hands were on the compression handle, but he just held them there without force. Sherlock closed his eyes and practiced a breathing exercise he'd been taught for vocalists, feeling his diaphragm move on every exhale, letting the familiar exercise calm him.

John was behind him, steady hand coming up to the small of Sherlock's back, the other hand braced against the door. "But-"

"Never released to the police, Sherlock should have said." Mycroft inclined his head towards Sherlock. "There were things that we had found and had not shared with the investigative team. It was already considered a cold case by then, and forensic techniques were not as precise in the 1980s."

"I was just saying-" John glared at Mycroft, Sherlock didn't need eyes in the back of his head to know that. John gave up speaking to Mycroft and spoke just for Sherlock, more intimate in the space he had created between his arms. "I was only saying...this might not be the same man." Sherlock snorted at that misguided bit of comfort and all it implied,_ you might not have to worry, you might not have to care as deeply as you do_. He'd never thought John would practically beg him to care less about the victims in a case.

Then, with one deep lungful of air, he pushed the handle and stepped inside.

There were more lights here than in the previous room but it did little to alleviate the utter sadness of the place. The body gone, the urgency of the moment and the techs was done, yet the hollow feeling lingered like it was imprinted on the place, a moment of time pressed into the walls, the foundation, the earth beneath them like salted ground after a battle. Like nothing good could grow there again.

The mattress had been removed, back to the Yard for closer inspection, but the wall and its bloody message was still intact.

Mycroft pointed to the far right corner and Sherlock shied him a look. Camera.

Sherlock walked to the center of the space and turned, to take in the full panoramic view. He brought his hands together and rested his chin on the tips of his fingers. "Yes...this is the same man." He whirled in place, fixing his eye on John before pulling the case file out of his coat, tossing the photos onto the newly cleaned floor, six to a row, before stalking the perimeter of them, comparing them to the room itself. He fired out what he, _they_, already knew at a rapid rate.

"Deliberate application of blood, knife technique unique to hunters." Sherlock stumbled for a moment over the words, turned down his mouth, but he was the ultimate master of his emotions. He must be."The lining of the burlap sacks had been added, after purchase." Sherlock looked up from a close-up of the child's head and scowled, achieving normality once again. "He didn't want their faces abraded. He turned the sacks inside-out, after."

Sherlock pointed to the wall and the Jackson Pollock-style spatter in monochromatic rust.

John saw that Sherlock was right. In the last photo the bag was pristine white, a shocking cowl of cleanliness and purity amidst the horror of death. Earlier evidence photos showed blood spatter on the inside, raw-looking burlap caked in dusty red. "It's like coins on the eyes."

But Mycroft shook his head. "No. Those were obels to pay the boatman. This is more impenetrable."

"I'd thought it was _regret_." Sherlock loaded the word with irony. "But that's at odds with the taunting that's happening now."

John squatted to get a better look at the photo. "He couldn't look at them after what he had done?" He reached out to touch his finger to the white linen against the red. "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young."

Sherlock nodded, deliberate and considering because the words fitted so well."Webster."

John smiled and said "Dalgliesh. On the telly." It made Mycroft wince so that was all to the good.

"If it's only the new ones that are thumbing their nose at you it could still be a copycat." John. His blogger. His devil's advocate.

"Moriarty."

"Yeah."

Mycroft nodded. "It's possible, but this feels..."

"...like the original," Sherlock finished. "We've done a thorough profile, and the new killings fit."

"What's the profile?"

Mycroft joined Sherlock beside the grouping of pictures and prodded one into alignment with the tip of his umbrella, lips pursing in consideration. "Boot marks around the body, size ten. Not a small man. Country background. An avid and skilled hunter; it's easy to cover up the taste for the kill if you can use hunting as an excuse. Early to mid twenties at the time; the first flush of killing human targets after years of animals."

"So no history of animal cruelty?"

"No. This one is good at hiding what he is. He started in his late teens, and the first murder was sloppier. It was probably a fluke or poor police work that there was no real evidence. He's smart and organized, though, because the next was well planned and well...executed." Mycroft winced at his own word choice. "Pedophilia and sexual sadism. He can't maintain a normal sexual relationship."

"He'd be forty-five to fifty-five now, and he's learned from each kill. Refined it." Sherlock looked at the more recent photos. "He never stopped. He wasn't imprisoned. You don't go from that," Sherlock nodded at an older photo and then the wall of blood, "to that, without some evolutionary steps."

"Someone sophisticated, then?" John asked.

"Sophisticated. Dramatic." Sherlock gave a half-nod, half-shrug. "And bloodthirsty."

"And the regret? Maybe he wants to be caught."

Sherlock walked to the edges of the room, trying to catalog minutiae. Stupid, stupid, to let himself succumb to such crippling base emotion. The scene is ruined, completely compromised by the slack-jawed idiocy of the Yard techs. "You would think so, from the most recent kills." Sherlock ended up staring at the one piece of evidence left intact, the mocking lyrics, the painted whorls that circled it, the lashes of blood. "It should be gutting him, tearing him apart, yet something isn't right. The behavior is too erratic, yet the killer is obviously organized." Did he or didn't he? Want to be caught, regret his act...so much conflicting data.

John cleared his throat. "So you think the killer was _faking_regret?"

"I don't know what to think," Mycroft answered. "It's rare for a serial killer to express regret, but it isn't unheard of. William Heirens had the compulsion to kill, but was also horrified by what he had done. He even left notes for the police, begging them to stop him."

"Addicted to murder?"

Sherlock stirred out of a quiet reverie. "Yes. Addicted, definitely. Remorseful, unlikely, if we take into account the new scene." What was he missing in the killer's psychology?

Mycroft walked over to stand next to Sherlock and put a hand on his shoulder. Sherlock didn't shake it off, or even bristle like a cat to annoy him, just continued to trace the Latin words and their malice with his eyes."We are missing something." He put out a finger to follow the movement of the strokes, trying to put himself into the mind of the man who had calmly applied the design.

"I thought your people took these?" John's voice held a note of humor and Sherlock backed it up with a contemptuous little laugh at the idea of Mycroft's people possibly being thorough enough.

"We are missing something in front of our faces, then. Something big."

Sherlock shook off Mycroft's hand and spun around to face John. "He staged everything; you could practically hear the Toccata and Fugue. He wanted us to know it was him- he wanted to see us- _me_- react on camera."

"Yes."

"We know he wants us to figure this out." Sherlock tapped the extravagant Britten quote."There's been something left for us, something fairly obvious, too. We just have to _see_it."

"You said it's more elaborate. In what way?"

Sherlock stalked over to where John was still examining the photos. "More knifework. The shibari, here," Sherlock gestured at an abdominal close-up, and a photo of the girl's thighs, "and here. It's more intricate. He's learned, gotten _better_." Sherlock spat the last word out, voice rough with loathing.

Mycroft gestured at the wall spatter. "This is the most obvious. The Britten quote."

Sherlock nodded then grabbed John's hand to pull him up before tugging him over to join Mycroft. "There had been no writing at all at the previous scenes."

John crowded in next to Mycroft and Sherlock to get a better look. The Latin quote was a bit longer than John would have the patience to brush on. "How was it done?"

"No obvious brush strokes-" Sherlock said, before being cut off by his brother.

"Smooth lettering, rhythmic dripping pattern-"

"Pipette." Sherlock was decisive.

"The words aren't haphazard, they are stacked, centered. They have symmetry. Why not just write it out in one linear go? This was well planned." Sherlock paced from one end to the other. "The blood spatter, here...and here." He held up his arm, whipping it from right to left, then once again, faster, in an eight count. "The direction is deliberate, first from the right, then from the left. Right hand dominant killer?"

Sherlock stepped back several paces, trying to take in the full picture without dwelling on the individual components.

"So why the circle of squiggles? Lot of extra work just for an effect." John asked. "Looks a bit Nouveau."

Nouveau design. Design. Design! It was...

Sherlock took two steps, turned John to him, pulling him in by the scruff of the neck and kissed him, deep and hard. When Sherlock pulled back he was grinning; couldn't contain his incandescence.

"John. John. You don't just conduct light. You are a bloody incendiary device."

"I am?"

"Design! I'd thought it before, but I'd never-" Sherlock cut himself off and dropped his hands from John, suddenly all business. "Mycroft! A computer! A laptop! I need the Adobe Suite!"

Simple. Stupid! Simple. So simple they'd missed it.

Mycroft pulled out his phone and called his driver. "It'll be just a moment."

Sherlock was craning his head around, following the curve of the surrounding pattern. He knew what it was, what it had to be, yet the significance of that was...

Sherlock clapped his hands together and hopped in place before turning to Mycroft and grabbing him by the cheeks. "You are going to be sooooo embarrassed." He gave Mycroft a chaste peck that he couldn't contain as the giddiness spilled up once again. His chest was heaving, he'd run a bloody marathon in one spot, he needed to get out, to move, to find the criminal bastard who'd thumbed his nose at them...and he could. This was it, he could feel it.

When Mycroft's driver slipped into the room like the personification of subtle Sherlock was on him, grabbing the laptop and collapsing to the floor in a tangle of coat and legs to boot up Photoshop. The driver left the room at Mycroft's behest and Sherlock was glad glad glad because this was a moment between the three of them only.

Sherlock held out an imperious hand, snapping his fingers until Mycroft slipped a data stick into his palm. It was the work of a moment for Sherlock to transfer the picture of the bloody wall, and then the interminable minute that it took for Photoshop to boot up.

"Why do I care who the developers are? Open. Open!"

Sherlock dropped the photos into the program, merged them, then clicked through a series of menus until he chose warp. Once Sherlock had chosen an action Mycroft inhaled, finally catching on to whatever Sherlock was attempting. Sherlock really had beaten him to the answer. Now they could both feel idiotic for not catching it sooner. Mycroft, with all of his diplomatic twaddle, had less of an excuse.

"John? Are you looking?"

John sighed and crouched down for a better view. "Yes. Why do you know Photoshop?"

"Don't be stupid. Fake IDs." Sherlock smiled at his aggrieved snort. "Look at the ring, John. Look at the ring device around the Latin and remember your Frost. We dance around the ring and suppose..."

"...but the secret sits in the middle and knows." John finished for him. "You are that smug secret. What-"

"Just...tell me when it begins to look familiar."

John was about to say something, but Sherlock was pulling threads of the grid out of alignment, straightening one edge, pulling another, gradually shaping the curve into a straighter-

"Hold up." John sat hard on his arse next to Sherlock, watching him bring another line down...down..."That's Arabic script."

"Not all of it."

"No. But that bit in the middle...that's...Dari."

"Do you know it?"

"Bit rusty, and it's rather a mess mixed with the spatter." John leaned in, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. "It's nonsensical. Instead, rather, be a...bad? Bad boy? Something about a tree. This is really disturbed. He'd rather be a bad boy in hardship? That doesn't make sense."

"Malo, malo, malo." Sherlock was frowning down at the screen.

"Excuse me?" John obviously didn't understand what Sherlock had just said, but Mycroft answered before he could ask for clarification.

"Malo, malo, malo, I would rather be. Malo, malo, malo, in an apple tree. Malo, malo, malo, than a naughty boy. Malo, malo, malo, in adversity." Mycroft cleared his throat and looked a bit self-conscious despite his decent tenor. "Young Miles singing about sinning. It's supposed to refute sin."

"The same opera?"

"Yes."

"Then what was the _point_?"

Sherlock moved the final portion of the grid and sat back, looking at it. "It was a message for all of us." Sherlock slanted a look at John. Calculating. Considering. Examining an idea too ludicrous to mention, yet..."Including you, John."

"Me?"

"Emphatically."

"And the design on each side?"

"Arabic musical structure is different from western structure. It's a common maqam." Mycroft cleared his throat. "That was for me."

"Mycroft?"

"Sherry was a violinist. I was a singer. And Mycroft-"

"A composer." Mycroft's voice held an unusual thread of self-deprecation that Sherlock knew was for show. Mycroft, no matter his deficits, was a superb composer. He hadn't even left the art. He'd merely changed media.

"But what does it all mean?"

"The Malo? Malo, Malum, Malus. Latin. Easy. But I doubt it means much. The clue is much broader."

"The fact that it's Dari in general." Mycroft gentled Sherlock out of the way and quickly saved the altered photo to a new file. He popped out the data stick which disappeared in a sleight-of-hand maneuver, and his phone appeared just as quickly. He dialed a number. "This is where I need to take over, gentlemen. I'll have another car sent round for you." Mycroft had already started a quiet murmuring into the phone before he made it out the door.

John still didn't quite get what they were aiming for, but he was starting to catch up. "What makes Arabic script so significant? Because I've been in the mid-east? Or because..."

"Yes, to all of it. We were right, before. The killer stopped because he moved to an easier killing field."

"Not dead, not in prison."

"He relocated. Late eighties, early nineties. Where did _you_learn Dari?"

"Afghan-" John had a sudden glimmer of what Sherlock was getting at. "The mid-east. He was in the mid-east. That would be the first Gulf War."

"Not just because you were in the mid-east."

"A soldier."

"What better place for a killer to hide than among sanctioned killers?"

"And the obvious trail?"

"That's where this becomes murky again. William Heirens scrawled _catch me before I kill more, I cannot control myself_in lipstick at a crime scene. And he, he's doing the same. A pederast opera and then Malo. Malum in Latin can be both the apple and the adversary. He's eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge and he regrets it."

"Regret again."

Sherlock wasn't looking at John anymore. What Sherlock was looking at wasn't in the room. It added up, but Sherlock didn't like the sum of his thoughts. "Yes."

"But you said that it makes no sense."

"Not if there is only one killer."

He could feel John go absolutely still next to him, but Sherlock was staring at the screen, at the blue LCD flush that illuminated everything and nothing. John's face was so expressive, so alien to Sherlock, whose default expression was robotic or disturbing, depending on the observer. Looking at John right now would make everything terribly real.

"Two killers."

"One who regrets. One who taunts. One right handed. One ambidextrous but left hand dominant."

"What is it?" There must have been something in his voice, some hitch or pause or vocal quality, but whatever it was made John take Sherlock by the chin until they were eye to eye. "What aren't you telling me?"

"This puzzle really was for all three of us. Not just for me and Mycroft."

"And?"

"You need to understand that I can't be sure. Hunches are notoriously un-"

"Sherlock. Your best guess then."

"Everything about this was personal. This was the work of someone who has a personal connection to us. For Mycroft and I, that was Sherrinford. That was music."

"I know."

Sherlock took John's hand in his own and squeezed. "Yet you aren't following this to its logical conclusion." John didn't deserve this kind of weight. "I don't think it was just any soldier, John."

Sherlock brought John's hand up to his mouth and rested his lips against the back of John's hand. "I think it was someone you knew."


	7. Chapter 7

Minstrel Boy, continued from part one…

"Dammit, Sherlock! I've told you everything I can remember that was the least bit odd, but we were in the middle of the desert getting shot at, so odd is pretty relative." John sat in his chair and glared at Sherlock, though he wasn't sure why he bothered; Sherlock was like anti-glare teflon.

As soon as he took a good look at Sherlock his frustration died and he felt like a right arse. Sherlock had folded himself onto the sofa and buried himself in contemplation; He stared at the photos that John had carefully pinned as if they could give him more information. Perhaps they might, if he only had the patience to wait for a narrower list of possible candidates.

He'd been surrounding himself with things he'd kept tamped down for much too long and John was a possible key to unlocking it all. John could give him instant gratification instead of hard slog…that's what Sherlock wanted, but that instant gratification was fleeting.

John knew what Sherlock _needed_, but he was helpless when it came to giving it to him outright. It stung, not being able to give Sherlock what he asked for, and he wasn't sure if Sherlock even realized the difference between the easy patch and the hard fix.

The visit to Bart's had been short, brutal, uncomfortable and ultimately useless. All Sherlock had to show for it was a new catalog of inhuman imagery to worry at. Nothing new could be gleaned from the corpse, so they'd returned to Baker Street.

It had made John hurt, that little girl's death. He couldn't help but imagine Sherlock's sister on a similar table, Y-shaped incision joining the other lacerations. And if Sherlock was to be believed, and John always believed him, then John had a tie to the man who put her there. John could feel his lungs collapsing in on themselves; he should be able to help, but he couldn't. His ordinary mortal mind was no match for the precision instrument that was Sherlock's. He had no great memory cache, he had no insight into people's secret histories. He'd been only a man, trying to help, trying to make sense of battle with only ordinary equipment.

When John got hurt he either walked away or lashed out. He couldn't walk away from this and now he was lashing out at someone who didn't need to bear that burden too.

"I need something to work with. Until Mycroft gets us a list of likely men who served in both theaters you are my only connection."

"I know, but you said it yourself, this killer blends in. And even if he was psychotic enough to attract attention it probably wasn't anything that wouldn't be blamed on the war. Someone showing signs of instability wasn't exactly uncommon."

Sherlock appeared impossibly young and a bit lost in a way that John had never seen for himself. He had been lonely and untethered for a long time before John had met him. John had been able to assemble an incomplete picture from little things he'd heard here and there, and seeing Sherlock return to that lost isolation, even briefly, could break John in ways he'd never before considered breakable.

Sherlock frowned but when he spoke it was tangential to John's response. "Most of my senses are too acute. I see everything; I see too much. I'm constantly buried under an avalanche of sight, sound, smell. I can only deal with that if I have strict focus, something for me to latch onto as a buffer. If the focus is there the rest becomes insignificant"

"That used to be music."

"It dried up. Music is nothing without a soul to drive it. You can program a computer to play Bach's work exactly as he had composed it, but we don't listen to it performed by a computer. We listen to fallible musicians."

"You still have your soul."

"I walled it off. I walled everything off. No soul; no pain. I'm not even sure if I believe in a soul."

John was able to fill in a bit of what Sherlock wasn't saying. Sherlock didn't want to disbelieve in the soul either. "Instead of music you found the work. And to fill in the gaps, you found-"

"Drugs."

"And now... you need a focus."

"As bad as it normally is..."

Sherlock trailed off, but John heard it all the same.

"You want pain as a focus, now?"

Sherlock sat up on the sofa and swung his legs off so that he could lean over and look at the floor. His hair fell over his forehead, shadowing his eyes, but John could see Sherlock's mouth, expressive for once, and the way that it almost trembled was gutting. "Yes."

He knew Sherlock hated the abstention from the work, the waiting only briefly punctuated by flurried bouts of analysis. But even worse than that, John knew, was how much Sherlock must despise this emotional recidivism. Sherlock was no longer that nine-year-old boy, but those nine-year-old emotions had resurfaced. Pain was fine when dealing with the sensory overload of pink suits and Triad thugs, but Sherlock hadn't developed a healthy response mechanism for _emotional_overload other than complete suppression.

John didn't think pain was what Sherlock needed. It was just the only thing he knew how to ask for.

If Sherlock had still been that child John would have grabbed him and hugged him and never let him go. Had anyone done that for little Sherlock in the aftermath? Had Mycroft pulled him into his bed at night and rocked him till he slept? Or had Mycroft tried to maintain a distant status quo? Become the aloof father figure instead of the support?

John had done that, though; hugged him, comforted him, whispered meaningless things to him, but Sherlock was a grown man, and needed reassurance like a grown man, and John loved him so damn much he ached with it sometimes, stealing his breath.

John was quite proud of how well Sherlock had dealt with everything thrown at him within the past twenty-four hours, but he knew that Sherlock was approaching critical mass and that something would have to give. The combination of emotional upheaval and a stagnant mind was volatile. Nitro glycerin.

That's what Sherlock was telling him, but how Sherlock meant it and how John interpreted it were two different things.

And goddammit, maybe John was being a selfish bastard, but he wanted Sherlock to want _him_, not the sexual trappings. He wanted to know if what they had was anything at all once they stripped away the domination and the toys and Sherlock's repression.

He didn't know. He really didn't.

Because knowing wasn't the same as hoping.

During the past several months John had been able to drain, or at least redirect, some of Sherlock's furor, but he wasn't quite sure what to do here; this was unprecedented. Sherlock needed human contact, needed it so damn much, but his only point of reference for that was purely sexual, and he only asked for sex if it involved either pain, domination or both.

If there was one thing Sherlock hated it was being told he was ignorant on a subject, but, _good Christ_, was he ignorant.

In Sherlock's warped perspective penetration equaled domination, but John had never subscribed to that idea. He'd dominated, and penetrative sex had been a part of that, but John had also bottomed during plain old vanilla sex and never felt like he was submitting. That was why John hadn't fucked him yet...he was waiting for Sherlock to understand the difference. He was waiting for Sherlock to understand that it was okay for Sherlock to touch and be touched in turn without there being some ultimate goal that went beyond giving each other pleasure.

Sherlock never initiated sex on the nights when they weren't sceneing. He would respond to John, enjoy what they did together, but he never asked for it. Hell, he never asked for a kiss or a hug, but he seemed to enjoy it when John gave one to him. Odd behavior for a man who claimed not to be a sub. John figured that he was practicing affection in this relationship based only on the knowledge culled from a previous one (the only one, maybe?). One that had ended poorly.

So John hugged Sherlock, and kissed him in the kitchen, on the stairs, little pecks and long, lush twinings of tongue, big bear clasps and small squeezes, all to let Sherlock know that it was okay, it was important, it was right.

Touching didn't have to mean getting off. Getting off didn't have to mean pain or submission. Pain and submission didn't have to equal penetration.

John's task was to get beyond what Sherlock could rationalize using whatever half-arsed ritual theory he was employing at the moment, and he was coming to the conclusion that he might just have to show Sherlock this thing he couldn't discuss. Throw it all out there and point to it, saying 'See? This. This!' Sherlock could scoff at the words, but not the act itself.

Right.

Easy.

Right.

And if there was some portion of him that was actively fleeing from dominating, well, that was nobody's business but his own. Sherlock trusted him, and John needed to honor that trust. He couldn't give Sherlock what he asked for if it wasn't in his best interest.

He couldn't give Sherlock a lot of things right now.

(Jeezus. Jeezus. He couldn't even imagine knowing...)

But he could give him this.

Sherlock was still looking at him like the most doe-eyed of Oliver Twists begging sir for more.

John...John was tired of fighting. Wasn't quite sure why he was fighting. Like war. Like Afghanistan. Like life.

John stood up and took Sherlock's hand, pulling him upright before leading Sherlock upstairs. John's room was better equipped for what he had in mind now. Which, according to Sherlock's currently crap level of sexual understanding, probably wasn't much.

John pulled the covers down the bed and retrieved the lube from his bedside table, then turned towards Sherlock, who stood in the door, uncertain and trying not to show it. John could tell now when Sherlock was being genuinely arrogant and when he was pretending to it. John usually ordered Sherlock to strip, but he wasn't going for a subservient frame of mind at the moment, so John approached Sherlock, putting his palms to Sherlock's chest, finger pads kissing his collarbone before stroking his hands downward.

He loved the feel of the muscle, long and lean from too few calories, loved the way the nipples firmed under his touch. John brought his hands down to Sherlock's hips and pulled him in for a kiss. Sherlock bent his head to John's and let John map the topography of his lips, chin, cheek sandy with barely-there stubble.

This was soft and slow exploration, with no drive or teeth, just the movement of soft flesh to soft flesh, the thrust and give lazy and golden like treacle.

John went for Sherlock's buttons, slipping each out of the buttonhole with no hurry. He only paused the kiss to take each wrist in his hands to undo the buttons at his cuffs. Sherlock looked at him, implacable grey eyes absorbing everything, not blinking. John pushed the cotton over Sherlock's shoulders and Sherlock dropped his arms from John's waist so that the silk-slick cotton could slip down his arms to puddle on the floor.

They kissed again, and this time John spread his fingers through Sherlock's hair, softer than John's new sheets, curls springy against his palms. He had hair like a baby, remarkably at odds with his personality. Sherlock tasted like tea and baking soda toothpaste, and that taste blended with the smell of him, animal musk and burnt sugar overlaid with the expensive rosemary and lime of his shampoo.

Sometimes John felt as if he could do this all day, just devour Sherlock in small sips instead of the great big gulps that Sherlock invariably took of everything. Kissing and softness didn't serve the ritual, so maybe they were incidental; Sherlock had no off button, and everything was either mineminemine nownownow or bloody useless. No in-betweens except for a few brief spaces that John had carved out for them. John was happy that he was part of the mineminemine group, but he wanted to slow Sherlock down for this, make him appreciate the journey. Sherlock...had no patience for that.

Strange, considering the way Sherlock had explained ritual to him, but Sherlock was also fighting assumptions about sex, about John. About power and control.

This ritual had grown too big for Sherlock to own alone, and adding another person to the decision making process had to have changed the outcome. And that made John wonder if Sherlock's aversion to soft and sweet wasn't just a lack of patience, but one created by fear.

If John ever ran into Victor Trevor he was going to kick some righteous posh-softened arse.

Sherlock controlled every single damn thing that John did, either through direct action or just by existing. John woke and thought of Sherlock. John went to sleep and dreamed of Sherlock when he had only dreamed of blood and despair before. The hours filling the between times were filled with Sherlock.

And John loved it.

Who did that make the bottom? Who did that make the submissive? Was there any difference at all between Dom and sub or did they occupy the same space?

Drove him nuts, thinking about it sometimes. Did Sherlock realize that? John had told him in a pretty blatant way, but he didn't feel like Sherlock knew it except in an abstract fashion.

John grabbed Sherlock's bottom lip between his teeth and gave a gentle tug that mimicked the way he pulled Sherlock to the bed by his belt. He fumbled with the buckle for a moment, distracted by his hands skimming Sherlock's abdomen, and the way it tightened against the play of his fingers. Sherlock's trousers puddled at his feet and John couldn't help it, he was down on his knees, removing shoes, stepping Sherlock out of his clothing, yanking down pants until Sherlock was naked and his.

John couldn't keep his mouth off Sherlock, licking up Sherlock's inner thighs and feeling a fine tremble there. He traced deep blue veins, shocking against the pale, smooth skin, with a light caress that was more tease than substance. He was still amazed that he got to do this, that Sherlock had let him close enough, considered John worthy enough, to share this with him.

John worked his tongue against the crease of Sherlock's thigh, and the smell of Sherlock's sex, the deepening of Sherlock's scent was a primitive animal-brain aphrodisiac. When John outlined Sherlock's bollocks with a wet swipe of his tongue the muscles in Sherlock's thighs flexed and seemed to seize under John's hands.

"John. What..."

John traced between them with a lick, ignoring the tickle of hair as he sucked at Sherlock's scrotum, enjoying the salt and the musk. Sherlock's fingers came down to hold John's shoulders, as if he wasn't sure what to do with his hands, or John.

"What are you doing? I thought..."

John wrapped his lips around one testicle and rolled his tongue around it before applying a gentle suction. He brought one hand around Sherlock's thigh so he could flutter a finger over Sherlock's perineum in a tease before applying firm pressure in time with each movement of his mouth. "John."

John felt Sherlock's fingers against his hair, not pulling, not even gripping, but patting and stroking as if John might pull away at any moment and Sherlock didn't want to hinder that. When John finally did pull away with a last lick it was only to press kisses to the base of Sherlock's cock, blowing hot air against the shaft as he lipped his way up to the crown. He worked the foreskin with gentle teeth and tongue, rolling the thin layers of skin and soaking them in saliva as he tugged and pulled and worked it down with mouth alone to reveal the swollen tip, the moist slit that was already welling up with bitter and sweet.

John enveloped the glans in his mouth and held it there, not even sucking or licking. He was passive around Sherlock's cock, as he looked into Sherlock's widening eyes. He was stretching the tension between them, creating anticipation as he felt Sherlock twitch against his palate, but that endless loop of sensation that he loved, the one created by mutual eye contact, mutual synchronicity in the moment, was broken when Sherlock turned his head away. Sherlock's fingers suddenly tightened in his hair and he thought that Sherlock might push him away, but those fingers never went any farther. No push away, no thrust towards. Just that finger clench and the aversion of Sherlock's eyes. Sherlock's denial of...of...what was it? The physical connection was there, but he didn't want to recognize or accept how John felt. No. That wasn't right. Sherlock couldn't accept how _Sherlock_felt.

Idiocy due to emotional poverty. That sounded more like it.

Bloody hell was he tired of fighting this battle because normal people did this every day and Sherlock wasn't so fucked up that he couldn't experience it.

John raised his hand, the one that wasn't cradling Sherlock's bollocks, and used it to touch Sherlock's chin and turn his face, his eyes, back to John's.

And John swallowed.

Sherlock's legs gave a coltish wobble before locking back into place, but John couldn't grin because his mouth was full and diving deep, deep, not as deep as Sherlock could go but he had a respectable mouthful and the look on Sherlock's face was gratification, devastation, elation, reverence, panic.

And he couldn't blame it on pain and domination.

John's hand hadn't even forced Sherlock to look, just nudged Sherlock's chin. It didn't make Sherlock's jaw move. It didn't make Sherlock open his eyes. John was quite sure that Sherlock realized that there was no dominance involved, just a gentle, silent request from a lover.

The fact that Sherlock acquiesced told John that Sherlock wasn't as entrenched in denial as he seemed.

John bobbed his head but it was a languid movement that he could maintain all damn day. Sherlock wanted it harder and faster because he wanted everything that way, but John kept to his pace, sometimes pulling off with a tongue wrapped around the glans, taking a breath as he rubbed his cheek against Sherlock's cock, making Sherlock gasp his name and halt on a short breath even as he maintained the visual connection that held them together even more than lips and cock.

He was worshipping Sherlock, and Sherlock was quite a bright boy. He would get it.

Sherlock started a slight flex of his hips, trying to get John to take a bit more, go a little faster, but John was having none of it and wouldn't let Sherlock dictate the pace because once John gave that up he might as well cede the whole struggle. If you gave Sherlock an inch he'd take...everything.

God, John wanted. Had wanted this. He'd told Sherlock he wasn't lifestyle. He liked the kink between them, but this is what he'd been missing...not the vanilla of the sex itself but the connection in spite of it.

John eventually pulled away, making the disconnect as wet, loud and filthy-sounding as possible. He never averted his eyes from Sherlock's, had possibly stopped blinking, he was so mesmerized, and Sherlock looked startled. Maybe a little confused. Still a bit fearful.

John undid his own fly and got to his feet, slithering his trousers and pants off and kicking them into a into a pile on the floor, leaving him naked and thanking fuck that he'd ditched his trainers earlier. He ran his hands up Sherlock afterwards: trembling flanks, quivering stomach, rapid tattoo of Sherlock's heartbeat under his hands.

And when John stepped towards Sherlock he slid his hands around. One reached down to cup Sherlock's arse, and the other went around Sherlock's shoulder to pull him into a kiss that tasted of Sherlock's pre-come on John's lips, of Sherlock's confusion and heart. Their bodies were touching all along their length. John had never minded being short until this moment because he had to pull Sherlock down and lift himself up to align them like he wanted to, cocks rubbing together in the creases of each other's thighs, moist slippery skin finding the perfect curve and hollow to glide against.

John pulled back just enough to speak, and there was barely a breath between them.

"You don't pay attention to words. Not really."

"I adore words. Ask anyone."

"Words lie."

"That's _why _I like words."

"So I want you to deduce this instead."

John wrapped his arms around Sherlock and used his weight to make them fall to the side, bouncing them on the bed in each other's arms. John licked Sherlock's lips open with just the tip of his tongue, not demanding an entrance but enticing one. Sherlock's mouth parted and John kissed Sherlock like they were both dying tomorrow. He was usually so on guard around Sherlock, trying to give him less ammunition, instead of all of it at once, but he wanted Sherlock to feel all of what John felt, and John's only recourse was baring everything.

Cards on the table.

God this was mad, and likely to backfire, and one of the most self-destructive things he'd ever tried but he just couldn't _not_.

This kiss wasn't the raw possessiveness and ownership that happened during a scene. It wasn't the soft comfort of one stolen during a cuddle on the sofa. It wasn't just a step that led to mutual sexual enjoyment. This kiss, the kiss, was simply John's heart, completely bare and trusting and stupidly obvious. So obvious that even an idiot berk like Sherlock should be able to figure out what was what.

And of course, _of course _Sherlock tried to fight it.

Sherlock knew that John couldn't be expected to recognize an intelligent sexual sadist in the middle of war, but he couldn't stop pushing it because John was the only link they had so far to the original killer's past.

There was a parabola of light peeking over that dark horizon and John was they key to unlocking it.

If John were like him...if John applied his methods...if John had a memory palace...

But John was not, and Sherlock would not like him for it if he were.

They'd gone to Bart's to inspect the body of little Olivia Smythe. Ava Williamson's body had been interred months ago and was not available. Two murders close together; months instead of the years that had separated the man's earliest kills. Was the escalation something that had happened gradually in Iraq, or was it there a new variable included in his madness? Did he have a more brutal partner?

Olivia had been neatly stitched back together, looking like a porcelain doll: inexpertly mended and washed white; bone china tinted with ash, turning to blue alabaster under the harsh hum of the overhead lights as he circled her table in the morgue. Smaller than Sherrinford, dainty hands, dainty toes, hair stick-straight like a sheaf of raw wheat, instead of Sherry's short, dark mop. Muppet hair he'd called it as he cut it when they were seven, ignoring the fact that he had the same hair.

Molly stood in the corner, arms crossed over her chest, bottom lip worried raw. She'd heard, of course, but didn't say anything. She disliked the autopsies of children under the best of circumstances, and Sherlock guessed that this one had been especially hard.

She'd nodded at him and got out of his way. A better offer of condolence he couldn't imagine.

Ava's body gave up no clues but the obvious, and Sherlock hadn't really expected otherwise. Smart killers: the clothes were gone, no biological evidence left for crafty investigators to analyse.

Tomboy with a mother who pushed her into cisgendered attire and hair-style. Keen on football, drawing, Tae Kwon Do.

He'd pulled the sheet up to her chin to cover the wounds and the more clinical incision. Eyes closed, lips slightly parted to reveal gap teeth, otherworldly pallor; he could almost imagine that she was asleep.

He'd walked away then. There was nothing for him there, and he'd known it before he'd left Baker Street. But he'd needed to be thorough; he'd needed to exorcise one more ghost.

The scene was tapped for clues, the parents couldn't help because it was a crime of opportunity, the body held nothing new: the only existing link to the killer was John, and John couldn't deliver what John couldn't see.

221B felt a bit like a prison now. He had to wait at home base. He had to stay functional. He had to admit that John couldn't magic up a suspect out of speculation and hope.

Sherlock had snapped at him, later, and John snapped _back _so he stopped his interrogation of John and focused on the photos that wallpapered the flat. He'd hoped that something new would jump out at him but he was afraid he was at an impasse until Mycroft (again) delivered the means to continue.

But John...was John. And John would never leave him alone.

He thought he caught concern, fond exasperation, worry, but the base note of it all eluded him, worried at him like a terrier all the same. But John took his hand, a silent agreement to own him, hurt him, make it all go away for a bit. Do the hundred and one things John had promised as he'd unselfishly gotten Sherlock off.

John pulled him, not through the kitchen and into Sherlock's room, but up the stairs and into John's.

Sherlock hesitated at the door. They generally kept all of the toys under Sherlock's bed, so John's room seemed an odd choice, but it was the domesticity of the scene before him that struck him as incongruent. John was turning down the bed, retrieving supplies, looking back at him with a warmth that blue eyes shouldn't be capable of producing according to any color theory Sherlock knew, even Johannes Itten's mystical rambling on the nature of hue and tone.

Sherlock didn't like to miss things. Not missing things was his _raison d'être_, but he had this inescapable feeling that he was suffering from inattentional blindness: there was an obvious stimulus here, but he couldn't see it because his attention was subverted. Was he so immersed in the case? In the attraction of pain? Or was it an interference effect? He had too many competing mental processes; maybe one was negating the others.

But he needed this. _Needed_it.

And maybe, once this was done, he would be remade enough to understand what was wrong (different?) with John.

John came to him and kissed him, ran his hands over Sherlock's body, and Sherlock waited, waited, waited, for the trap to be sprung, John lulling Sherlock into a false sense of vanilla security before grabbing his hair and taking control of the kiss; taking him.

But that moment never came. John mapped his mouth and undressed him with deliberate laziness. When John pulled away to undo Sherlock's sleeves Sherlock could only stare at him with mute anticipation, wondering where this was leading, trusting John to get him there because John was the genius in the bedroom.

The next kiss was similar to the first. The taste of John was bright and electric on his tongue but John steered it so slow that Sherlock was becoming nervous with anticipation, had to stop himself from twitching with impatience because he wanted all that John could dish out and John had the habit of drawing out the anticipation longer if Sherlock whined about it.

He gradually deepened the kiss, adding more tongue and the edge of teeth to pull at Sherlock's bottom lip. He walked backwards, pulling Sherlock with him by the belt, and Sherlock went gladly, gratefully. They bumped the bed and John stroked his belly, and Sherlock could feel the shaking of John's hand and John's hand was shaking, why was it shaking?

The shaking of John's hand told Sherlock that, yes, he was missing something obvious, something that could reduce John, strong, fearless, adrenaline-addicted John, to a  
>hand tremor when the threat of death could not.<p>

He almost said something, he wasn't sure what, but John was on his knees for him, undressing him, then his mouth roaming the sensitive skin of Sherlock's inner thighs, his bollocks, his cock. John went down on him sometimes, but it was often from a position of dominance, and it had never been like this. This was a slow game, a slow burn that went beyond a blow job. John took a meandering path, leaving no area untested for sexual response. Licking, sucking, rubbing; he pressed his nose into Sherlock and inhaled deeply in a neanderthal way that shouldn't have made Sherlock's blood effervesce the way it did. Sherlock started shaking, shaking like John had been shaking, watching that mouth work him over, coax every nuance of feeling to be had from the act of fellatio, worshipping Sherlock like Sherlock worshipped John.

A surprise about-face that seemed somehow forbidden, and wrong. Dangerous.

Sherlock had kept his hands fisted at his side, but now he couldn't stop them reaching out, petting John's hair, smoothing down the stubborn tuft that often stuck up in the back. "John. What..."

But he couldn't get out any more than that as John sucked one bollock into his mouth, rolling it against his tongue with a gentle suction that almost hurt, it was so exceptionally fine. Sherlock clutched at him, grabbed his shoulders, tried to remember not to hurt the left one, tried to...

"What are you doing? I thought..."

A wet finger slid up his perineum to apply firm pressure that followed the beat of John's mouth upon him, and the combination was a strain on Sherlock's composure. It was amazing. Beautiful, giving, real, earthy, incredible and John John John, "John."

Sherlock couldn't stop touching him, couldn't stop feeling John, couldn't help it as John looked at him and held him in the deepest bondage he'd ever known with nothing but the motion of hands and mouth and the look in those fathomless eyes that made Sherlock fall down, down, down...

Sherlock had to look away, it was too intense. It left him too-

But John touched him. His face. His jaw. And coaxed Sherlock back to look as John held him in his mouth, hard and vulnerable and wanting, but Sherlock had no eyes for that, had eyes only for John's eyes, and when John swallowed Sherlock still couldn't look away, even though it felt as if he were dying a little. Because this hurt.

This _hurt_.

John was an inescapable fact. John took him slowly and terribly and left him with wanting and a nameless terror that still couldn't overwhelm the magic of being wanted in this way, by this man.

Sherlock wanted it over with. Sherlock wanted it never to end.

The two desires were mutually exclusive and his vacillation between the two was tearing him apart.

He wanted John to give him orders. He wanted John to tell him what to do, make him bleed, use his body. That was easier.

John never stopped looking at Sherlock.

John never stopped looking at Sherlock.

John.

When John drew his mouth away from Sherlock's length for a final time he hollowed his cheeks on the long sucking motion, wet tongue sliding up the shaft, pulling away from the head with a dirty ice-lolly lick and a bob of his Adam's apple.

John stared at him, hungry, as he shucked his clothes; stared at him, devouring, as he stepped into Sherlock, touched Sherlock. Sherlock felt John's hands stroke him, grip him, suddenly calling attention to the fact that Sherlock himself was almost crawling out of his own flesh with something unnamable and hadn't even noticed it because he'd been consumed whole.

When John took his mouth he could feel the percussive rhythm of heartbeat against heartbeat, too close to differentiate, too rapid to time. It felt like it was trying to escape; Sherlock's, John's, it was practically the same thing now and he wasn't...

When John spoke Sherlock only answered on autopilot. The conversations between mouths and between eyes were of two different natures he was sure.

John dragged him to the bed, and...

...and...

...that.

John kissed him.

John had kissed him before but this wasn't just...

Kissing wasn't...

John.

It was, simply, John.

He could feel it, as John's tongue swept in and seduced his own, in the way John's hands clasped him by the elbows. John's body was taut and primed for sex but John himself was pliant and submitting to...not to Sherlock. Sherlock would never want that. No.

John was surrendering to the totality of _them_.

People had many facades that they presented to the world, and multiple levels of facade that they showed to others depending on a hierarchy of importance. John's hierarchy of importance went from government official, to stranger, to acquaintance, to sister, to friend, to landlady, to best friend. Sherlock was the last stand, the final level of veneer, and he'd been ridiculously pleased with that.

But then John had removed that last veneer, shown himself as naked and vulnerable underneath, and Sherlock realized that he hadn't understood at all.

It was brave.

It was_ idiocy_. He was witnessing emotional suicide, because who in their right mind would...

Sherlock would ruin this, somehow.

That, in turn, could ruin John.

Sherlock thrashed his arms, struggling away from John's grip, but John wouldn't let him go. John's hands viced down so Sherlock bit his lip till he tasted iron, and snarled as he pulled away from John's mouth and the terrible, terrible truth it was speaking without a sound.

John was bleeding now, but Sherlock couldn't be arsed to care because this was not what he agreed to, this was not what he wanted, and how could John do this to him, the selfish bastard.

"You have a safe word." John ignored the way Sherlock squirmed, and leaned down, not kissing Sherlock's mouth, but kissing the exquisitely sensitive skin of his neck, leading to his ear. It was delicate flesh, and even the slightest brush could make Sherlock judder in arousal, but right now it was like paint thinner on an open wound because it made...it made...

Sherlock kicked, but his leg tangled in the sheet as he thrashed and John was able to grab him by the shoulder and flip him onto his back.

John had the mount, stradling Sherlock's chest, Sherlock's wrists in his hands. This was a familiar position, but not the same, because John wasn't trying to hold him down and possess him, hurt him like he wanted. John was breathing heavy and licking blood from the corner of his lip and trying not to hurt him because John was too bone-headed to realise that he wasn't hurting Sherlock _physically_.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"You know." John looked at him, and Sherlock looked away because as much as Sherlock liked to mock it, John had emotional wisdom, and Sherlock didn't want to be read.

Not like John had opened himself up to be read.

Not like that.

Sherlock kept his eyes averted and closed them hard, but he stopped fighting. The tension didn't leave him but he was no longer trying to claw at John.

"I'm making love to you." John scooted down Sherlock's body and placed a kiss to his sternum, his bellybutton, making Sherlock convex then concave his stomach with a rapid patter of need. He was still holding Sherlock's wrists, but the hold gentled until the touch was merely a cobweb between them, whisper-thin.

"No."

"I'm making love to you because I'm in love with you."

Sherlock tried to stifle the sound he made, abort it before it could become substantial, but he only managed to catch it in his throat where it fluttered like a dying bird.

"And you." John spoke hushed secrets into Sherlock's hipbone. "You love me too."

It wasn't a question.

There was no question.

Just...truth.

Sherlock couldn't say anything to that. Couldn't lie. Couldn't tell the truth. Could only marvel at the simple power of the web John had caught him in. Carbon nanotubes weren't as strong.

John nipped at him, just his hip, but it made Sherlock's body curl. Sherlock's hands found their way to John's hair and shoulders as John moved further down. He bypassed the obvious, cock and bollocks, raising Sherlock's arse up to lick at his perineum and press his teeth into the curve of Sherlock's buttock.

John's tongue was a subtle tattoo on his skin as he graphed a path across Sherlock, lips cool but brand-hot against him. He tracked every nerve ending Sherlock possessed, it seemed, as he ran slick-wet-writhing lemniscates over groin and thigh.

When John first touched his tongue to Sherlock's arsehole, tracing the rim with only a few scant millimeters of connection, Sherlock transcended his body, his vision like the boost of a rocket briefly lighting the firmament.

Sherlock groaned, a deep, gritty, yearning in his chest, and the sound spurred John on. John was lapping at him, the gentle flutter replaced by the deep working of his tongue, fucking into him, sloppy and wet as his lips sealed over him and sucked, and wasn't that a filthy thing? That noise, that slurp of suction and the answering groan that rattled in John's lungs. That tongue driving into him in waltz time, one two three, one two three.

John spread him further, wider, and pulled Sherlock open with his hands so he could burrow deeper, get closer. It was so intense that Sherlock had to bite the knuckles of one hand with his teeth, like a girl in an old black and white melodrama that John had insisted he watch and not delete. His other hand was buried in John's hair, pushing for once, guiding John where he wanted him, and it was good, so good.

The rimming was so gluttonous that Sherlock didn't even register the introduction of John's fingers until they skimmed his prostate. He froze for a moment, hands palsied against John, and then he cried out and started speaking, babbling nonsense and noise and every stream-of-consciousness bit of his soul into the charged air.

John, John dear God, John what do you, how do you, please John, more I can't take please please, this is, no idea no idea, John so good, good, good is an inadequate adjective, splendid magnificent, John, you are The Ring Cycle, Mathis Der Maler, the Rite of Spring, the Marriage of Figaro.

John, you are La Mer, you are Einstein on the Beach.

You are the Messiah and St. Matthew's Passion.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Otello. The Goldberg Variations. Rhapsody in Blue. Bitches Brew.

Purcell's King Arthur.

You are Music to Play in the Dark.

A Limnal Hymn.

Sherlock wasn't sure how much he said aloud and how much he kept inside, but it was all there, inside him, breaking free and shattering into a chaotic existence as John slicked them up, slicked himself up, no condom, nothing between them, they'd already shared blood anyway, and then he _pressed_.

John pressed him all over. John's lips, pressed into Sherlock's collarbone, John's face turned towards him to look at him as he did it. John's hands, pressed against Sherlock's as they clasped, and how had that happened? Sherlock holding hands with a man as they made love. It sounded freakishly humorous, but the reality of it was anything but. Every little snippet of romantic twaddle he'd ever heard about the act of fornication came back to him in a rush because none of it seemed quite so silly after all.

John's cock pressed in, head slipping around his hole before finding purchase and ingress, and oh, oh, Sherlock could feel his body stretching around John, that first breach of his sphincter stretching him wide, reminding him that John was by no means a small man in the ways that counted.

He'd used a lot of lube, and after Sherlock had sealed tight around the head John slipped in fast, big, big, but Sherlock wanted it so much, relaxed into it so much, and John was suddenly full inside him and big, so big, and Sherlock could feel his pulse there like it was Sherlock's pulse, and in a way...it was.

John canted his hips on the outstroke so that when he pushed back in his cock slid straight against Sherlock's prostate, and it was almost too much, like the oversensitivity after an orgasm, but too much was shivery and gorgeous at that moment, liquid sunshine instead of blood in his veins, ethanol sweetness dissolving on his tongue like candy floss.

Sherlock was already on the verge of orgasm, he'd wanted this for so long. No- not quite this. Sherlock had wanted sex. Fucking.

He wanted John to pick up his pace, to flex into him harder, matching greater force with the deep penetration of those languid, rolling thrusts. But John just looked in his eyes and smiled, giving him a minuscule shake of the head before leaning in to kiss him.

This was true ownership. It didn't require pain or complex direction. It hadn't needed rules or guidelines or that stupid safeword to make it fact. John had offered everything to gain everything. John was the bravest man Sherlock knew, and he had no choice but to fold himself up like a peace dove and slip himself into John's pocket.

Sherlock was not quite as brave as John but it was unnerving and fright-raising all the same. They were at the end point of Occam's razor: stripped down to bare need and bare love.

For a boy that had put on every neurotypical affectation like a layer of overcoats, the removal of it all was overwhelming.

Freeing.

John.

A layer of sweat filmed between them, making them slide smooth, and John pressed Sherlock's legs back even further, deepening the places he touched and allowing their chests to meet and mingle with a salt sheen.

John's scent was like fire and tea overlaid with the civet smell of fucking and it was delicious, Sherlock wanted to taste, so he did, pulling John even closer, wrapping around him in an uncomfortable parody of a sexual netsuke, but he needed John, needed him mouth to mouth, needed to follow that bead of sweat down his neck and lap, lap at his suprasternal notch, his chest, then a quick, final kiss to the corner of his jaw when he finally had to pull away, unable to sustain the doubled-up position any longer.

John could roll his hips like a belly dancer, and the slow thrust was driving Sherlock out of rational thought and into basic lizard-brain territory.

"Please."

"You don't have to beg."

"I know." Sherlock bit the inside of his cheek as John pulled out halfway and started shallow thrusts that bumped into his prostate on every inner glide. "But I want..."

"Do you know?"

Sherlock rolled his head on his neck in exasperation. "Yes. Yes. You love me, I love you. This isn't just sex. _Now get on with it_."

"You sure?" John's eyes were bright and elfin even though Sherlock could see building desperation behind them. "I don't need to prove my point just a little more?" John punctuated that with a quick dig of his hips.

"John!"

"Right." John drew out, which was _not_what Sherlock wanted, and flipped Sherlock over, pulling at his hips until his ass was in the air and his cheek was pressed to the pillow. Sherlock gave him a dirty look over his shoulder and snarled.

John smirked. He laid one hand on Sherlock's shoulder, the other on Sherlock's hip, and ran his wet cock along the crack of Sherlock's arse.

"This work for you?"

"John. _Fuck me_."

"Fair enough."

When John slammed in there was a brief moment of pain, but that just underscored the pleasure that followed. John spread him wide and went as deep as he could, a fast stroke in, hips driving against arse, slower stroke out, almost slipping out before the hard return. John was a constant rub against his prostate, near constant stimulation, no mystery there, and the unceasing beat of it was sending him over too quick.

Sherlock gasped for air and clawed at the pillow, held on, eyes tight, tears leaking because this was pleasure sharp enough to cut. John was bent over him, panting hot breaths and obscenities and love words into his spine to mingle with the moisture collecting in the small of his back.

Sherlock had never orgasmed without cock stimulation, but he could feel it building in his belly, and he laughed at the feeling, incredulous and high and it was so, so good and...

He couldn't hold on, that ball of energy inside him getting luminous, an unstable explosive. He let go, feeling the hot wash of electrical charge reverberate inside him, overwriting every previous orgasm, making every other significant encounter with anyone else turn to dun. He could hear John gasp behind him as Sherlock fell apart, and John's fingers bit into him, leaving bruises, his mark, but John held off his own orgasm. Sentiment? Sherlock couldn't think. His legs shook through it, wanted to give way beneath him, so John rolled them to the side, still inside him, still flexing in.

John pressed his cheek to Sherlock's back and insinuated his arms around him, clutching Sherlock like a security blanket.

"That." John cleared his throat. "That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Sherlock snorted and clenched around John, but he didn't disagree.

"You are...this is..." John pressed little fluttering pecks of his lips into Sherlock's shoulder, an odd counterpoint to his quickening thrusts.

"John."

"What?"

"I want you to come in me." Sherlock bore down on John, and John hissed like a predator in his ear.

"Yes." John was digging claws into his chest, biting at the base of Sherlock's neck, and when he finally came the orgasm drew a harsh yell from his throat, the sound muffled by Sherlock's flesh in his teeth, the small pierce of skin, the shallow breaking of blood.

The calm lassitude after sex was new to Sherlock. He'd never wanted to laze around in bed with anyone before.

John was idly tracing patterns into Sherlock's chest with a finger, occasionally flicking a nipple into hardness.

"Do you believe in the transmigration of souls?"

John raised his head to give Sherlock a sideways look. "You have the oddest pillow talk."

"John."

John dropped back to the pillow. "Are you asking if I believe in God?"

"Gods don't matter. What I wanted to know is whether you believe in any sort of afterlife."

"I don't know. I haven't thought of it much. Growing up, if you had asked my mum, she would have said we were Church of England, but the only time it ever really figured in our lives was Christmas, and that was really about the presents. And after seeing what war is like I have a hard time believing in a beneficent God." John turned towards him, putting one hand under the cheek that was pressed into the pillow. "Why do you ask? I assumed you were an atheist."

"I...am."

"You don't sound that sure."

"After Sherrinford died I spent a lot of time trying to make some sense of it. She didn't feel gone. Not really. If I walked into a room it seemed like she had just stepped out of it. Sometimes it still feels that way."

"That's not uncommon."

"I read a lot on religion. Everything I could get my hands on. But it seemed so rubbish. I wanted to believe that she wasn't just...not there." Sherlock stroked John's hair. "Wishful thinking, the idea of a soul. It'll be completely disproven once there is human cloning. Then the masses will have to find their comfort somewhere else."

John grabbed Sherlock's wrist, then twinned their hands together. "Did you? Find any comfort?"

"Religiously? No. Philosophically? Perhaps. Philosophies that support modern scientific thought instead of denial of the truth. Remind me to tell you about the correlations between theories like the Heisenberg Principle and Schrodinger's Cat and the Buddhist Doctrine of Emptiness. Buddhism spoke to me on many levels, even as a physicist."

"Really."

"All_ is _suffering, John."

"Everything?" John smiled and leaned in for a kiss.

Sherlock returned the kiss, but his smile was tempered with something solemn. "Even this. Any happiness is ephemeral at best, and the knowledge that it is transient is painful. Viparinama Dukkha."

John snorted. "Not really comforting, there, Sherlock."

"Isn't it?" Sherlock sat up, propped up on his elbows. "The Buddhist goal is cessation of all suffering, the cessation of existence. I believe in a final death. Buddhists believe in Samsara and Nibbana."

"I never thought I'd be having this conversation with you."

"I gave up on any religious study when I pushed her loss completely away. But now..."

"You like the comfort that Buddhist philosophy provides even if you don't buy into the idea of endless rebirth."

"Yes."

Sherlock spooned up to John's back and buried his face in the nape of John's neck.

"I suppose contemplating the nature of Ultimate Reality might just save the wall from further mutilation. But..."

"Yes?"

"Doesn't Buddhism focus on sublimating the ego?"

"John?"

"Hmm?"

"Piss off."

They were, for lack of a better term, _cuddling_, on the sofa when Mycroft came, bearing four manila folders. Sherlock would deny it but it was a sofa snuggle all the same.

Sherlock lined the folders up in a row and raised an eyebrow at John. "Are we ready to go to war?"

John nodded. "You are the very model of a modern major general."

"Why John, that was almost clever."

John gave him a two-fingered salute then turned to the files. His face fell, unable to sustain anything other than stoic acceptance of the job before him. He hoped that Sherlock was wrong, that he had no ties to this, but even as he thought it he knew it was a false hope. And, if it helped catch a killer and gave Sherlock some closure, it was a burden he would gladly carry.

"These men fit the profile, the locations and the timeline. If they aren't familiar, we have other avenues of investigation available, but..." Mycroft didn't need to finish. Other avenues were less likely to produce solid leads.

John took a breath and took the first file. There was a photo clipped to the top of the paperwork. Edward Axelrad, dusty and unsmiling in desert camo. Unfamiliar, but John skimmed through the documents anyway, looking for something to jog a memory.

He finally shook his head and placed it down.

The next file's candidate was in civvies in a bar with a few mates, grinning drunkenly. Abel Williamson. Not familiar.

He put it with the other.

When he opened the next file he tensed immediately. He didn't even need to glance at the name. Knew the face. Knew the shape of his jaw and his words, the photo catching him as he spoke, and his hands clenched on the file with the certainty that he felt.

"John."

Sherlock had tensed when he had tensed, knowing that this was it. Mycroft leaned in to look at the killer. John tossed the file to the table, where the papers fanned out. The photo was on top. A handsome man, late 40's, black fatigues, speaking with another soldier.

"John?" Sherlock looked torn, torn between the file and the look on John's face, and the fact that Sherlock would pause for even a moment at a time like this said more to John than a hundred flowery declarations.

More than he deserved, because he was so, so sorry.

Sherlock's hand found John's arm and squeezed.

"I saved his life, you know."

"John."

"He was bleeding out. The shrapnel had clipped an artery." John tapped the picture with a strangely steady hand. "Sebastian Moran would be dead if not for me."

Thank you for reading. Please review.


	8. update

I have posted a stand alone story in this universe, The Black Pearl, that takes place after the main Cold Song arc. The next chapter in this arc will be posted soon, however.

Thank you for your patience, and enjoy the new story.


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